The Rejected
by Fusion7
Summary: (Set 3 years after the "Promise of Reunion"/canon ending) When Ib & Garry burned Mary's portrait, they destroyed her father's remaining goodwill towards humanity. Now, bent on revenge & with his recreated daughter at his side, he unleashes his innumerable monsters upon the real world. Caught in the invasion's center, Ib & Garry must somehow survive the conflict emerging around them
1. An Artist's Ire

_(I uploaded this story earlier under a slightly different name, but it got screwed up in the process so I took it down. Here it is again.)_

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><p>"No, No! Please stop! Please stop!" Mary cried.<p>

Despite her pleading, the pair of humans paid no heed and showed no mercy. With the dispassionate and deliberate nature of a psychopath, Garry flicked on his lighter and set the painting alight.

Mary could only scream as her body erupted in flames. Within seconds, they engulfed her completely. Collapsing onto the ground, she writhed in agony as the fire blackened her clothes and charred her skin. And yet no less unbearable than the searing physical pain was the emotional pain, her feelings of anger and despair. Tears streamed from her eyes only to sizzle and evaporate amidst the heat.

None of this seemed fair to Mary. Is this what she gets for wanting friends? Is this what she deserves for seeking a better life? Struggling to look up, she saw Ib and Garry simply standing there, watching. She could accept Garry's inaction, but Ib's complacency in Mary's imminent demise devastated her in a way not even the flames could. Ib was supposed to be her _friend_! Ib was supposed to be her _sister_! Yet now she abandons her to die? Now she betrays her?

By this point, Mary was literally disintegrating. Burning chunks of her body and clothing were falling away and crumbling to ash. Oblivion began to beckon. Feeling the life fading from her fabricated heart, she took one last moment to look Ib straight in the eye. Even as the tears and flames blurred her vision, Mary's piercing glare seemed to cut straight to the little girl's soul.

Her last sight was of Ib wincing slightly. And then all was dark.

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><p>"Mary."<p>

"Mary."

She slowly opened her eyes. She was no longer in her room; she wasn't sure where exactly she was, aside from the fact that she was still in the Fabricated World. Yet she sensed someone close to her. Not one of the humans who betrayed her. Someone dear to her, someone she loved even if at times she also feared.

"Father?" she asked. She surveyed her person. No burn marks, no smoldering edges, all was like before the fire. She then sat up and looked around. She seemed to be in a small studio of some sort, like the one she was born in, but different and part of the Fabricated World. A floating paintbrush was putting the final touches on a new portrait of her. It was almost like her old picture… except something about it seemed almost imperceptibly darker. She couldn't put her finger on it, though.

"I have recreated you," Father's disembodied voice stated. "I wanted you to know what they did. I wanted you to reflect on everything that has transpired, on why all of this happened."

Rolling her eyes, Mary muttered under her breath, "All I wanted was to go to the outside world and have friends and not be lonely…"

There was no reply, but she immediately sensed the stern disapproval in the air around her. Father was not amused. "I'm sorry," she whimpered.

"When I first gave you life," Father resumed, "I imparted to you the warmth that still remained in me. You embodied what little goodwill I still held towards humanity and its society."

Mary quietly noted to herself that Ib would not have understood half of what Father was saying and would have been utterly lost.

"Soon after I created you" he continued, "you begged to see the real world. You yearned for the company of human friends. You pleaded again and again for me to give the world a second chance. And I relented. I agreed to give the world a second chance. I agreed to let you reenter their society, to be the embodiment of my reconciliation with them. All I asked for in return from them was for someone to take your place. A token of acknowledgement for their past wrongs. It would only be fair that way. I sent over from the real art gallery two of their most promising individuals, so that they may prove themselves worthy and bring you over to their world; one as your escort, the other as the sacrificial lamb. And what did they do?"

Mary's voice choked. "They… they killed me," she managed to say as she tried to fight back tears.

"Yes. After they desecrated my artwork and insulted my name, the escort abandoned you, and the lamb burned you alive." At this point, Mary could no longer hold back. She began to cry.

"Were they ever truly your friends?"

"No," Mary whimpered as tears rolled down her face.

"Correct. They were never your friends." Father's tone suddenly changed. "Neither of them!" he roared at her. "Their world's notion of friendship is utterly meaningless! They rejected you as a monster! They hated you! Even the little girl hated you as soon as she learned that you weren't one of their kind!" By this point Mary was sobbing uncontrollably. Had Ib really hated her because she wasn't "real"? Memories of all of the time she had spent with Ib peeled away to reveal the memories of Ib watching complacently as Mary burned to death. Whether she was more upset by this betrayal or by a strange sense of having failed Father, she was not quite sure.

The presence around her abruptly softened again. "There there, Mary," Father said. "I too was rejected by their kind. With hollow praise they fawned over my work as long as it caught their attention, but as soon as another artist arose, they abandoned and forgot me. The only ones who remembered my name were the whores who continued to seek my hand and inheritance through marriage. When I decried these injustices, the world laughed me off as insane. They had rejected me. I understand your pain."

Another pause. Mary sniffled and started to dry her reddened eyes. Father's demeanor usually seemed cold and distant. It was unusual for him to try to comfort her or sympathize with her like this.

He resumed. "I should have never let my guard down and let you reach out to that world. It was a mistake for me to believe that its society deserved another chance. I hope that you agree now."

Mary could only nod. Perhaps Father had been right all along about the real world. Perhaps seeking friends had been a mistake. Perhaps all of the books she had on how to make friends were built on nothing but a giant sham.

This made sense for Garry, what about Ib? Even after all that had happened, Mary somehow couldn't get herself to hate Ib. Even now, all Mary could get herself to see was a good-hearted girl raised by a no-good world. She almost wanted to feel sorry for Ib, that poor human whose conscience had been smothered and silenced by her society.

But then the image of Ib passively standing by and letting Mary die flashed back into her mind. Did it really matter how Ib had been socialized? Had it somehow made the agony of burning alive more bearable? Ib was supposed to be Mary's friend! Not a sham friend like what Father just described, but a _real_ friend! And as far as Mary was concerned, a real friend wouldn't abandon someone to die, no matter what she was taught by society!

Mary's sadness started to give way to a desire for retribution. "Father," she asked as she stood up, her lips trembling, "what happened to Ib and Garry? Did they get away with what they did?"

"I am afraid so," he responded. A small canvas materialized, and on it appeared a crude sort of window into the real world. Mary's fabricated heart sank as she saw that her murderers had not only survived, but thrived. She saw them talking, laughing, bonding over how their mutual hatred of the Fabricated World and all who lived in it. At one point, Ib briefly expressed a twinge of guilt about having stood by while Mary burned to death. For a moment, Mary's rising anger softened, but this moment was shattered when Garry replied, "Look, it had to be done." Worst of all, Mary saw Ib silently nodding. Not only was she complicit in the act; she _condoned_ it.

Any remaining warm feelings for the two humans melted away. "But this is wrong!" cried Mary, stamping her foot as the canvas disintegrated. "Can't you do something, Father?! This isn't fair! They shouldn't be able to get away with this!"

Out of the side of her eye, Mary noticed that her new portrait was complete. It was indeed darker than the original picture. The thorns on the roses were more prominent now. Her previously warm smile and gaze were now icy, almost malevolent. She looked almost as if she was being forced to smile out of courtesy but in reality harbored a deep-seated hatred for the viewer.

"Fear not," Father cooed, "for they will not. Just as I have slowly rebuilt you, so too am I creating our means to achieve justice. They and their world shall pay for all their wrongs against us."

At that point, a door on the side of the studio unlocked. Father wanted her to come. Walking through the door, Mary found herself on a balcony overlooking a vast, dimly lit chamber, unlike any other in the Fabricated World. Despite her vantage point, she couldn't discern the far side of the room or even the ceiling. There were no permanent features in the room, but scattered all across the floor were easels, canvases, blocks of clay, and all art supplies imaginable.

And as far as she could see, dozens of paintbrushes, chisels, and other tools were diligently painting and sculpting new brothers and sisters. Many looked somewhat like her older siblings, but there was something darker, scarier about them. Legions of headless statues arose, similar to the ones she was used to, but bulkier and meaner in their appearance. They lacked normal hands; one had been modified into a claw, while the other was replaced with a cannon-like appendage. They were joined by floating white mannequin heads, delicate red tendrils streaming from their necks as they cried tears of acidic blood and emitted noxious red gas. Succubi presumably derived from Big Sister dragged their picture frames across the floor. Even Red Eyes appeared; a gun had been sewn into his back.

Others were nothing like any of the previous dwellers of the Fabricated World. Gargoyles soared overhead like birds of prey. Spider-like figurines skittered along the floor, their hollow bodies full of venom. Armored, three-legged monsters lacking a distinct front or back stomped into view, each of their three sides sporting a sculpted face with a cannon protruding from the mouth. Lumbering in the distance, hulking behemoths at least 50 feet tall took shape.

"Don't worry, my dear child," Father said he said as the abyssal serpent from an older painting slithered out of the shadows. "Their world shall be brought to justice,"

"Father, are you trying to –"

"If possible, my dear," he replied. "Their whole society is guilty. But I will make no promises. I have seen them when they fight amongst themselves; their weapons and war machines are strong. Yet even if we don't make their world ours, our retribution shall be satisfactory so long as we do two things."

"What?"

"We must destroy Garry. And we must kill Ib."

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><p><em>(So that's what I have for my first Ib fanfiction. I chose to give Mary and Guertena a relatively closer relationship than other authors because it simultaneously gave him a personal stake in seeking revenge against Ib and allowed me to flesh out his character in a more satisfying manner. Namely, it let me give him a bit of a persecution complex. I am not sure if I have the skill or talent to continue the story, though. If you liked it, I don't know if I can do justice to this first part, and if you disliked it, then whatever I do next might be even worse. Again, this is based off of the "Promise of Reunion" ending.)<em>

_(Credit for the cover image goes to MadD-NerdGirl, who generously allowed me to use her great fanart of the series for my cover image. Check her work out on DeviantArt!)_


	2. They Come

_(Thank you to everyone who provided the support and encouragement for me to keep going. Hopefully this next chapter will live up to your expectations.)_

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><p><em>I have been turned into a painting, stuck to the wall in a long, dark room. I don't know how this happened or where I am. I try to move or call for help but am unable to do either. I can't even move my face. I am trapped on this canvas, frozen in my current position.<em>

_A young girl steps out of the shadows and walks in my direction. I struggle to discern who she is at first, but she is coming closer, and her form is becoming clearer; her golden blonde hair, her bold green dress… _

_No. Not her. Please let it not be her._

_I can now make out her facial expression. Her bold blue eyes are fixed intently on my picture. Her mouth is curled into a twisted grin. Her overall expression is a combination of spite and dark satisfaction. At this point, I notice that she is clutching a short metallic object in her left hand._

_Oh God. It's her._

_She stops. "You abandoned me," she says chillingly. "Didn't we promise to be friends? Why did you break your promise?" The metallic object turns out not to be her palette knife after all, but rather… a lighter?__…__ Oh no. Please don't!_

_I can't run. I can't plead with her. I can't so much as even show my fear on my face. My calm expression on the canvas remains fixed and frozen, locking in my actual feelings of panic and terror. I hear the flick of the lighter and see the glow of its small orange flame. "You could have said something. You could have stopped him." she hisses as she draws the lighter closer and closer to me. _

_I want to scream. All I want right now is simply the ability to scream._

_The lighter's flame touches the bottom of the canvas, igniting it. "But no," she says as fire begins to devour me alive. "You let it happen."_

Ib bolted upright from her bed. It was just a nightmare… It was _that_ nightmare.

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><p>Writing a new entry in her diary, Ib sighed as she thought about her dream last night<strong>.<strong> She normally wouldn't record something like this, but it was the fourth night in a row she had this nightmare. By writing out all of her thoughts on the matter, Ib hoped to resolve whatever mental qualm might be triggering the dreams.

It had been just shy of three years since her encounter with the Fabricated World. The anniversary was only a few days away, in fact. As brave and mentally tough as Ib was, the incident left the same mark on her that it would have left on anyone her age. For the most part Ib was still the same quiet but well-adjusted girl she had always been, except now she wanted nothing to do with art. She used to love drawing and working with watercolors, but following the trip to the gallery, those activities came to a sudden end. Her grades in Art class had dipped noticeably. Whenever Ib walked past a portrait, she would subconsciously cling to the other side of the room. Even if her outward demeanor didn't always show it, internally Ib's experiences had taken their toll on her.

Ib's parents noticed the shift in their daughter's behavior and naturally wanted to know what was troubling her. They could tell that it had something to do with the trip to the gallery. That was when the change abruptly occurred, after all. Following their visit, Ib's mother was among the group of wealthy donors who helped make the originally-temporary Guertena exhibit permanent, yet despite her mom's enthusiasm, Ib refused to ever set foot again in the gallery. Saddened by her daughter's sudden disenchantment with art, Ib's mother ruefully wondered if she was somehow to blame for it all by having taken Ib along to an exhibit that evidently was not suitable for someone her age.

At least initially, Ib's parents also suspected that the issue might be connected to Garry – that strange, effeminate, purple-haired man who Ib apparently befriended at the gallery. They were wary enough when he abruptly showed up at their door one day with Ib's handkerchief, but his disturbing familiarity with their daughter and the fact that he had their contact information in the first place was particularly alarming. Despite his seemingly friendly manner and Ib's apparent fondness for him, her mother and father saw every reason for them to be suspicious and subsequently grounded Ib for having given her address to a stranger. Ultimately, though, Garry managed to demonstrate his genuine intentions and gain her parents' trust. This wasn't easy, but thanks to his patient efforts and Ib's persistent lobbying, it eventually happened. It became increasingly clear to Ib's parents that Garry was unlikely the source of their daughter's troubles; if anything, he seemed like he _shared_ whatever traumatic experience Ib had gone through.

Yet whenever her parents tried to ask Ib what was wrong, they couldn't get a straight answer. The most they were able to get out of her was that she accidentally wandered into part of the gallery that probably wasn't supposed to be open to the public and got lost; that it was really scary and hard for her to find her way out; that she met Garry in there and gave him her handkerchief because he had cut himself and was bleeding. It was far from a satisfactory answer, but Ib wouldn't say any more.

After all, she knew better than to try to tell her parents what actually happened. There was no way they would believe her. Nor would her teachers or friends. Ib couldn't talk to anyone about what she experienced, really.

Well, there was one person she could talk to about the Fabricated World. Ib looked up at her little calendar hanging from the wall. Today she was going to see Garry again. He would be coming by very soon to pick her up, in fact. Despite the rocky start between Garry and Ib's parents, her mom and dad had since come to trust him enough to allow the two to go out on their own together, without a parental chaperon. Ib always looked forward to these days. More than just close friends, they were the only two people who the other could confide in about what really happened that day at the gallery.

Finishing her diary entry, Ib swapped her pencil for a big red marker and drew a bold "G" on the corner of the page. It was how she marked entries related to the incident, so she could easily seek out – or avoid – them later on. Lost in thought, Ib absentmindedly flipped back through her diary to read these past entries. There was one on how part of her almost felt bad for Mary. Another dealt her frustration at being unable to tell her parents what really happened. Yet another one, a relatively recent entry, focused on how she occasionally wondered what was going on back in the Fabricated World.

Finally, there was the large entry on the incident itself. Upon escaping the Fabricated World, Ib initially lost all her memory of what had happened and only regained it thanks to a chance encounter with Garry back in the real art gallery. Afraid that she somehow might forget it all again, Ib wrote a detailed account of everything that happened upon arriving home. Marked especially boldly, it covered how she first found herself in the Fabricated World, the monsters she encountered, how she first met Garry, and how the two of them finally escaped shortly after Mary's death.

The doorbell rang. "Ib!" her mom shouted, "It's Garry!" Snapping back into reality, Ib hurriedly gathered up everything she needed and raced over to the front door. In her rush, she forgot to shut her bedroom door or close her diary. "Bye Mom! Bye Dad!" she called out as she left, adding, "We'll be back before dinner!"

Several minutes after Ib and Garry departed, Ib's mom happened to walk by her daughter's bedroom and saw that she had left her reading lamp on. Sighing, she entered the room to turn out the light, making a mental note to admonish Ib when she came back. As she reached for the lamp's switch, her eyes briefly fell upon Ib's still-open diary and the red highlighted entry that it was open to.

Ib's mom froze, her eyes widening.

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><p>"Yeah, I've also been having a lot of unpleasant flashbacks about the gallery recently," Garry said after Ib told him about the nightmares of Mary. The two of them were eating lunch together at a diner in the middle of town. Although they were not the only patrons in the restaurant, they had managed to find a table far enough away from everyone else to be able to talk more freely about their "shared experience" without drawing incredulous stares. A TV was quietly playing an old comedy film, but the two paid little attention to it. "Still," Garry then said, "you can't let yourself feel guilty about what happened to Mary. She tried to kill us – twice. We had no other option when we burned the painting. Her death was her fault."<p>

"I know, you're right…" Ib replied halfheartedly. "It's just…" She trailed off. Mary was one area where Ib and Garry had their differences. Ib knew that Garry was right and wanted to agree with him fully, but she just couldn't shake her slight sense of guilt over Mary's death. To be sure, Mary had certainly made bad choices, but all she wanted was a normal life. Ib sometimes even wondered whether killing her was the right thing to do, or if there might have been a way that all three of them could have worked out their differences and escaped the gallery together. Garry, on the other hand, was not so inclined to feel sympathetic for Mary. He could see why Ib might take pity on her, but he did not share the feelings. The subject almost made him slightly defensive, in fact.

"But anyway," Garry said, changing the topic, "I guess it makes sense that we're thinking about the Fabricated World so much right now. Can you believe it's already been three years?"

"I can't," Ib replied, shaking her head. Following that, Garry asked Ib about school, and she in turn asked him about his work and graduate studies, but by and large the Fabricated World continued to dominate their conversation. "So, I'm not sure if you've heard already," Garry said at one point, "but it's official now: Our favorite art gallery has been formally renamed the Guertena Art Museum."

"I guess it has been in the making for some time now. My mom would be really excited to hear this," Ib responded, adding "although she probably already knows."

"Yeah, you mentioned that your mom is a big Guertena fan and was one of the donors behind the shift in the first place," said Garry. Ib nodded somewhat embarrassedly and then tried to focus on the food before her, falling silent for a short amount of time. After two minutes of quiet, though, she looked back up and asked Garry, "Why do you think Guertena created the Fabricated World and made it the way he did?"

"I was actually wondering the same thing and read up on him at the library," Garry responded. "Although he was very well-off financially, he became extremely bitter and cynical towards the end of his life. He felt that the world had abandoned him for other artists and that his work was underappreciated. Guertena also apparently had a life-long interest in the occult. Regardless, shortly after painting 'Mary,' he committed suicide… I guess all of this might explain why the Fabricated World is so twisted."

"That would make sense," Ib replied thoughtfully. After a short pause, she asked another question. "Do you ever wonder about what is going on back in the Fabricated World? Do you think that the gallery or anyone in it remembers us?"

"I hope not. That whole place felt like it was out to kill us, and if it or its inhabitants remember us, I doubt they have any good intentions," Garry replied. "Come to think of it, I –"

The programming on the restaurant's television abruptly stopped, replaced with an emergency broadcast display. "We interrupt this program to bring you breaking news," an announcer said. Everyone in the restaurant fell silent, including Ib and Garry. An employee turned up the volume.

"Heavily armed attackers have begun pouring out of the Guertena Art Museum and are overwhelming the security and local police forces. Their nature is not known at the moment, but witnesses described them as 'surreal,' 'alien,' and 'inhuman.' Law enforcement officers have closed off the area around the gallery and will try to contain the attackers until heavier reinforcements arrive. It is unknown if they are connected to the museum or to Weiss Guertena, the artist to whom it is dedicated."

Ib and Garry turned pale as they stared at each other in horror. They instantly knew what was happening, and they knew exactly whose heads the "attackers" were after.

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><p><em>(Now the real fun - along with the the real challenge - begins. Anyway, Looking at how Ib &amp; Garry were actually faring, it appears that Guertena likely "cherry-picked" the scenes he showed Mary in the previous chapter of them in the real world in order to instill as much anger as possible. Special credit goes to Musapan, whose great Ib fanfic "Purple" provided much of the inspiration behind the initial setup involving Ib &amp; Garry.)<em>


	3. Flee, Hide, Survive Part 1

Watching from the now ruined museum, Mary observed the fighting as it spread across the city. "So this is the real world," she thought to herself, smirking. She found it hard to believe that only three years earlier, she saw this world as some sort of promised land and would have done almost anything to come to it. Now, she saw the real world as it truly was, and today she entered it not as an immigrant, but as a conqueror.

The playful gleam that once inhabited Mary's eyes had since disappeared. It died the same day the old Mary – the Mary who idolized and aspired to join the human world – died. It died when Ib and Garry killed the old Mary for having had such aspirations. It died when they showed her the truth about human nature and "friends." Now, Mary's eyes instead burned with a desire for vengeance. Like her father, she saw humanity for what it really was and scorned it as such. However, much more so than Father, her anger was directed at a very specific portion of humanity. For Mary, "humanity," referred first and foremost to the two humans who betrayed and murdered her.

Besides her stood a small pedestal, reaching no higher than her shoulder. An iridescent glass orb floated above it. It was Father, or rather how Father established his presence in the real world. Lacking a physical body, he could not directly travel through the portal per se, so instead he used this artifact as a way to project his will into the real world. Through this simple setup, Father maintained his entire command and control system.

The invasion was off to an excellent start. Father's forces had secured the area around the gallery and were rapidly fanning out through the city. Resistance so far consisted of lightly armed police officers, and their small arms fire was no match for the monsters. Sooner or later the human military would arrive and slow the advance down considerably, but by then Father's foothold would be firmly established. There was only one thing that had not gone as they would have liked: opening up the portal to the real world had somehow disrupted Father's ability to track Ib and Garry. He would have to hunt them down the old fashioned way.

A headless statue approached Mary and the altar. Ib's and Garry's location had been reconfirmed. The two of them were still in the city but appeared to be trying to flee. "Very well then," responded Father. "Ensure that they do not escape."

Mary listened to the brief exchange intently. She clutched a crinkled piece of paper in her hand with several crayon drawings on it. Making heavy use of the color red, the drawings detailed everything Mary would do to Ib and Garry once Father had his hands on them.

* * *

><p>"We need to get out of here!"<p>

Hastily slamming down the rough approximation of the restaurant bill on the table, Ib & Garry bolted out of the diner and ran to Garry's car. The art museum was only a mile or so from their current location. They could see several plumes of smoke starting to form and heard gunfire coming from the gallery's direction. "Of course, they only put out a bulletin after the situation is out of control," Garry muttered as he and Ib dove into the vehicle.

"There's that army base an hour's drive from here. We should be safe there!" Garry said in an urgent tone as he started up the car. The sounds of battle seemed to be coming closer. "Do you know how we'd get there, by any chance?"

"Wait!" Ib cried in alarm. "What about my parents?!"

"The route would be too risky! Guertena's monsters could cut us off and we'd be sitting ducks!"

"But, but...!" she started to reply. In a sickening moment of realization, Ib recognized that Garry was correct, and she gave in.

"Okay, I think I remember the base's rough location! We're out of here!" Garry said as they sped off. To his frustration, he found that other drivers were still following basic traffic norms despite the emerging crisis, impeding their getaway. "Come on, go! Turn already!" Ib heard him growl to himself at a stoplight. The sounds of gunfire were starting to come too close for comfort. Garry was not normally one to get impatient in traffic or experience road rage, but his sense of urgency felt more than justified given the situation. The moment the light turned green, he floored the accelerator and shot through the intersection significantly above the speed limit.

Garry turned on the car radio and set it to the local news channel. Updates on the situation flowed in, however inane or regurgitated they might have been at times:

"… The attackers, who witnesses have described as alien and surreal, are continuing to push throughout the city in what appears to be an effort to take and hold territory. Law enforcement officers have so far been unable to contain them..."

"… There is no word yet on the status of the visitors and staff of the Guertena Art Museum, but according to Police Chief Daniel Nash, this is anything but a normal hostage situation, and he has every reason to fear the worst…"

"… The mayor has called for the city's evacuation and asked for any and all assistance from neighboring towns' police forces as well as from the military. 'This is no mere shooting rampage or terrorist attack. This is an invasion of some sort,' he told reporters at hastily organized press conference…"

"… This just in, the governor has declared martial law in the area affected by the attack, while an army spokesman said that the military is mobilizing as fast as it can and will send in soldiers as soon as they are ready…"

As they approached the end of the downtown area, traffic rapidly began to build up. Other people were attempting to flee as well, and together they were clogging all the roadways out. Before long, the flow of traffic had ground to a halt. "Crap!" Garry exclaimed. The sounds of battle continued to come closer. Ib turned around and looked out the rear window. In the distance she saw inhuman figures coming towards them. In particular, a stout, three-legged monster the size of a tank was approaching. It was almost crab-like in appearance, and Ib could make out what looked like a trio of gun barrels sticking out of the monster.

Seeing that they were going nowhere, Garry stopped the car completely and closed his eyes. "Okay, don't panic, Garry. Don't panic," he said under his breath as he gathered his courage. After a moment of silence, he turned to Ib and said, "Okay, if we want to live we're going to need to go on foot! Let's go!" The two of them abandoned the car and began running.

Before they could get too far, the tripod-like monster shot what could only be described as an artillery shell of some sort at them. It landed in the middle of the traffic jam and exploded, flinging Ib and Garry onto the ground. Ears ringing from the blast, Ib slowly picked herself up off the shattered pavement and looked around. Chunks of asphalt and burnt-out cars littered the roadway. She briefly panicked when she couldn't find her rose but then remembered that she was still in the real world. Seeing that she had escaped the blast with only minor scrapes and bruises, Ib ran over to make sure Garry was okay. He had thankfully also avoided any major injuries and was getting back up onto his feet as well.

At that moment, an immense, eight-foot gargoyle landed in front of them, sending up a cloud of dust and crushed asphalt. It began to approach the pair menacingly. Terrified, Ib and Garry tried to backpedal but found themselves cornered amid the wreckage of destroyed cars. There was nowhere to run, and before long the monster was within striking distance. Releasing a fearsome roar, the gargoyle raised its claws up to smash Ib and Garry like a pair of bugs. A crude picture of two corpses appeared on the ground – one male, one female.

Suddenly, before the gargoyle could strike, a hail of heavy machine gun fire tore into the monster's stone body, cracking it to pieces. Amazed, Ib and Garry looked up and saw an attack helicopter flying in their direction. In their panicked state, they had somehow not noticed it approaching earlier. "The base's garrison!" Garry exclaimed with joy. "They're here!" A pair of fighter jets swooped down and performed a strafing run against Guertena's vanguard. In the distance Ib could see soldiers – human soldiers – approaching. The tripod monster turned to face one of its cannons at the attack helicopter, but before it could fire, the gunship shot one of its unguided 70mm rockets at it, striking it in the leg and enveloping the tripod monster in a large explosion.

Waving their arms, Ib and Garry ran over to the attack helicopter, shouting "Over here!" at the top of their lungs. The gunship appeared to notice and started to turn, but before anything else could happen, a shell shot out from the cloud of smoke where the rocket had exploded and struck the helicopter, tearing through it completely and destroying it in a ball of fire. Burning wreckage rained down onto the ground. Although badly damaged, the tripod monster had survived the gunship's rocket and had managed to line itself up for a new shot. More gargoyles landed in front of Ib and Garry, and behind them rows of headless statues advanced, bulkier than the ones from their first encounter with the Fabricated World and equipped with claws and what looked like arm-cannons.

For a moment, Ib and Garry thought they were doomed, but they then realized that the monsters were more focused on the arriving military than on them. Seizing the opportunity, the pair bolted away towards a nearby building. Several of the statues broke off and gave chase, firing their arm cannons at them. Otherworldly bullets whizzed over Ib's and Garry's heads. Right as the two of them reached the entrance, a shot grazed Garry's left arm, causing him to wince in as he ducked into the doorway. Thankfully, it was unlocked. Inside, the building seemed deserted. Spying several tables and chairs, Garry immediately pushed them in front of the door to form a makeshift barricade, buying precious time.

"Ib, do you recall any monsters like this with guns from the Fabricated World?!" Garry panted as he pushed one final chair into place. Ib shook her head. "Neither do I," he stated, "and that only freaks me out even more for some reason." He was about to say something else when the statues began pummeling the door, trying to break through the barricade. It would only be a matter of time before they succeeded. Looking around the room, Ib spotted an emergency exit in the back of the building, tucked away in a small hallway marked for restrooms. She signaled her discovery to Garry, and the two of them made their way out of the exit.

Several seconds later, the statues burst through the barricade, saw the exit their targets had escaped through, and resumed the chase. By this point, though, Ib and Garry had already turned a corner, doing whatever they could to avoid being in the statues' line of fire. For a period of time it seemed like they were beginning to lose their pursuers, but just when it looked like they had gotten away, Ib and Garry ran straight into another group of headless statues, which promptly began firing at them. Panicking, Ib and Garry ducked into an alleyway, and the pursuit began anew.

The chase continued for several, painfully long minutes. Ib and Garry found themselves increasingly out of breath. They couldn't keep going much longer and had to find a way to lose the statues. Rounding another corner, they came across a row of dumpsters and immediately knew what they had to do. Praying for there not to be anything sharp at the bottom, Garry lifted Ib into the one of the dumpsters and then clambered into it himself, shutting the lid as he did.

For a brief second, a sense of relief washed over Ib and Garry, but it quickly came to an end when they heard the sound of unnaturally heavy footsteps coming in their direction. It was the statues. Falling completely silent, Ib and Garry held their breath and listened with dread as the footsteps came closer and stopped in front of the dumpsters. There was a pause. They heard the statues open one of the nearby dumpsters, and then another. Ib and Garry dared not even breath. The pair was sure that this time it really was the end. Another moment of silence ensued.

The footsteps resumed, becoming quieter and quieter as the statues walked away. They were apparently convinced that their prey had continued running and had lost them. When she could no longer hear the statues, Ib released an immense sigh of relief, gasping for air and panting from exhaustion at the same time. Out of shape and completely out of breath, she simply wanted to curl up and pass out, but she knew that she couldn't let that happen – not again. Garry, who wasn't in a much better state, slowly opened the dumpster's lid and checked the surrounding area for monsters. The coast was clear.

Ib and Garry nonetheless remained in the dumpster for the time being, letting themselves recover. Although they were far from comfortable, the pair was at least out of sight from any new threats. To ensure that they didn't suffocate and to let in a little light, they propped the dumpster's lid open slightly with a piece of trash.

Finally, after an hour or two of waiting and hiding, they felt ready to get out. Checking again for any danger, Garry hoisted himself out of the dumpster and then helped his companion get out as well. They looked around in shock as they took in their surroundings, realizing the full scale of the situation. The place looked like a warzone; it _was_ a warzone. The buildings bore various scars of battle, with several being damaged quite significantly. Not a living soul was in sight; they were all either dead or had to be hiding. Given the level of destruction, it was evident that Guertena's monsters had not bothered to differentiate between the military and police who actively opposed them, and the civilian population. Ib and Garry could hear the sounds of intense fighting in the distance. Judging from how far away it sounded, they could tell that the monsters had pushed the army back from where the pair initially saw them.

To get a sense of how far the monsters had pushed, Ib and Garry entered an abandoned multistory building and made their way to the top level, keeping an eye out for danger the whole way. The building had access to the roof, offering a relatively unobstructed view of the surrounding area, at least compared to what they could see from the ground. Ib and Garry saw that Guertena's forces had already seized the entire city and surrounding region. The small base at which they had hoped to seek refuge had fallen. So too had Ib's neighborhood. She could only hope that her parents had managed to evacuate in time. The flashes of explosions and the sound of artillery fire marked the current line of battle and as such the de facto border of the territory under the monsters' control.

Suddenly, an immense, transparent purple barrier of some sort appeared in the sky above them. It appeared to be emanating from a building not too far from the Guertena Art Museum. "What… What is that?" Ib asked, somewhat alarmed.

"I don't know," Garry could only reply. A few seconds later, their answer came when a fighter plane attempted to perform an airstrike on the gallery. The plane launched a missile at the museum, but the missile slammed into the purple field and exploded harmlessly. The barrier was clearly protecting Guertena's monsters from aerial attacks or bombing runs – a prudent move no doubt.

Shortly afterwards, Ib and Garry began to descend from the top of the building. As they did, they had a sickening realization: With Guertena's front lines standing between them and the safety within the military's lines, the two of them were essentially trapped in the area under the monsters' control.

* * *

><p><em>(So there we go. Part of me worries that I might have given Garry too much dominance in his relationship with Ib, but I'm not sure. Regardless, I don't imagine either of them having any combat experience, so there is going to be a lot more "flight" than "fight." If you are looking to see Ib and Garry suddenly turn into action heroes who take down dozens of mooks every minute, this might not be the story for you. Finally, this is my first time in many years trying to write an action scene, so any feedback on what worked or didn't work would be greatly appreciated.)<em>


	4. Flee, Hide, Survive Part 2

In the requisitioned building that served as their headquarters, a group of military officers stood gathered around a campaign map, discussing the situation and planning their next move. Forty-eight hours had passed since the initial attack. The fighting was entering its third day.

"Well, the good news is that while they're still pushing us back a little, it looks like we've finally halted their spread for the most part," said one of the officers, a colonel. "As for the causalities, more reinforcements are en route. All in all, we should be good just holding the line until we can wear their numbers down."

"So in other words," another officer responded, "we're admitting that it's a stalemate and settling in for the long haul." The colonel didn't reply.

"I don't get it," the commanding general growled. "We have the bastards fully encircled, yet it doesn't seem to be doing a damned thing!"

"Remember, sir," replied a subordinate, "the monsters are coming from the museum itself, so we haven't actually cut them off from anything. And then there's that aerial barrier. It seems to expand as the monsters gain ground."

The general sighed in frustration. "If only we could bring our air power to bear. Their gargoyles are no match for fighter jets, and if we could get rid of that barrier we could bomb the museum and whatever the hell is inside it into dust."

"Oh, one other thing, sir," said a junior officer. "Aerial recon indicates that the monsters are constructing a giant doorway-like structure near the gallery, at least 100 feet tall. Given how surreal this whole incident has been, intel is guessing that it's a new portal of some sort, and based on its size I have a bad feeling about whoever it's for."

At that point, a soldier entered the room. "Sir – General Landon," he stated, realizing that he needed to specify which officer he was addressing, "a woman from the area is standing outside and would like to speak with you. She claims to be the mother of Ib, that girl the monsters seem to be after, and she says she has some important information for you."

The general looked back at the soldier. "Very well, bring her in. We definitely could use more intelligence on the situation." The soldier exited and then came back with a brown haired woman. Slightly disheveled, she looked like she hadn't had a full night's sleep in days. The woman nervously approached the general, holding a notebook at her side.

"Ah, welcome. So you're the mother of the girl these monsters are hunting for," said the general, smiling politely as he tucked away his earlier frustration.

Ib's mother turned pale. "Wait… What do you mean?"

"Pardon me, let me back up," he said. "I'm General Eric Landon, commander of the forces combatting these monsters. My men have reported seeing graffiti spontaneously appear that say things like 'Ib's head,' 'Hang Garry,' and 'Give us them'. They seem to have a strong vendetta against her and that other man."

Ib's mother's heart sank. "A… Anyway," she stammered, "I have something I felt you should see. It's Ib's diary, and some of the entries seem relevant to what's going on now." She handed the notebook to the general. "I stumbled across it the day of the attack," Ib's mom continued, "and it talked about alternate dimensions and strange monsters stemming from a trip to the Guertena Art Museum. At first I wasn't sure what to make of it or if I needed to call a psychiatrist, but now it all makes sense."

"Ah, interesting!" remarked the general as he flipped through the journal. He quickly figured out the meaning of the red G's. "If you don't mind, I would like to keep this for the time being. In any other situation, I would've dismissed this as quackery, but right now this could be the intelligence breakthrough we've been hoping for. Thank you for bringing this to our attention, ma'am. Your service is greatly appreciated."

"Thank you, sir. There is only one thing I ask in return," Ib's mother responded as her voice began to choke up. "Please, please find my daughter. She was out with a friend when the attack happened, and we haven't heard from them since. We don't even know if they're dead or alive." Her eyes grew watery. "If it's at all possible," she pleaded, "please find Ib and bring her back safely, or at least confirm her fate so her father and I can have peace of mind."

"We'll… we'll do our best," General Landon said hesitantly. Ib's mother tearfully thanked him and exited the room to see her husband, who was waiting outside.

Once she was gone, one of the officers turned to General Landon. "Sir," he slowly asked, "I presume this rules out any further discussion of using the two as bargaining chips, correct?"

"Most likely," Landon replied. "Legal issues and ethics aside, I don't know how we'd even get our hands on them in the first place, assuming the enemy doesn't beat us to them. Besides, the thought of sitting down and trying to negotiate with those monstrosities makes my skin crawl."

* * *

><p>For three days now, Ib and Garry had been living in hiding, hunkered down in the abandoned building that served as their new home. They were fugitives in the monsters' eyes, and having seen the graffiti demanding their demise, they knew it. Being caught would mean certain death, either immediately or later in some horrible torture chamber in the Fabricated World.<p>

Guertena's monsters weren't the only issue, though. They also needed to worry about life's basic necessities – food, potable water, warmth. Although he had quit smoking, Garry still carried around his lighter "just in case" ever since his encounter with the Fabricated World, so building fires was not too much of an issue. Food and other supplies proved a more difficult challenge. The idea of scavenging initially appalled Ib and Garry, and aside from the small blanket they found and used the first night, they held off as long as possible. Even in their situation, scavenging struck them as not only incredibly degrading but also no different from stealing. By the second day, though, their hunger became unbearable. Scrounging around the building, Ib and Garry managed to find a large bottle of water, a small jar of peanut butter, and a can of baked beans – just enough to hold them through the rest of the day. Additionally, they were able to locate a small satchel and, crucially, a can opener.

By the third day, the hunger had returned. "Garry," Ib quietly said, "we can't keep on like this. We need to go out and find more food."

"What?! But Ib, we can't do that! It's too dangerous! Besides, scrounging in the area right around us is one thing, but going out and actually seeking other people's stuff is another."

"It's either that or we starve," Ib replied. Garry heard his stomach growl. "Okay…" he slowly said, "You're right… Let's go." The pair crept out onto the street. Constantly on the lookout for patrolling monsters, they searched for any place where they might be able to scavenge food and other supplies. Along the way, Garry spied a piece of thick twisted rebar and picked it up. It was of just the right size and weight to serve as an improvised club and would likely do a fair amount of damage if swung hard enough. Garry decided to keep it. If they were cornered, perhaps he could use it as a last resort defense weapon.

After several minutes, Ib and Garry stumbled across a medium-sized abandoned grocery store. Jackpot. They went into the building and looked around. The place appeared to be empty. Ignoring the areas where the food would have spoiled already, Ib and Garry began to fill up their satchel with canned and preserved items, which were still edible. They were tempted to simply delve in on the spot but didn't want to risk being out in the open for too long.

Ib and Garry suddenly heard a noise from behind a nearby isle. They froze. They crept over to investigate, when without further warning a pair of thin red tendrils grabbed Garry by the throat and began to strangle him, causing him to drop his rebar rod. The tendrils emanated from a floating white mannequin head, otherwise no different from the ones they saw in the Fabricated World. It shot out another tentacle towards Ib's neck, but she managed to duck away and scramble out of reach in time. Turning its attention back to Garry, the monster wrapped a second set of tendrils around his neck and tightened its grip.

Watching in horror as Garry turned blue in the face, Ib realized what she needed to do and raced towards the piece of rebar Garry had dropped. The mannequin head turned to face her and began to emit toxic red gas. Holding her breath, Ib grabbed the rebar rod, dodged another set of tendrils aimed at her throat, and swung the twisted steel bar as hard as she could against the monster.

_Crash_. The mannequin head shattered to pieces. Its tendrils shriveled away to nothing while the red gas quickly dissipated. Garry fell onto his hands and knees, gasping for air. "Th… Thank you," he managed to pant as he got back onto his feet.

The two of them looked back at the destroyed mannequin head. "Garry," Ib said, "we need to get out of here. They know where we are now." They hurriedly gathered up the satchel and exited the building as quickly as they could, getting as far away as possible. From a distance, they watched as monsters began to converge on the abandoned grocery store.

As Ib and Garry headed back to their hideout, the pair stumbled across the corpse of a soldier, killed in the previous days' fighting. They stopped. A sickening but pragmatic idea flashed into Garry's head. Putting his inner revulsion aside, he turned to Ib and asked, "have you ever fired a gun before?"

Ib shook her head. "Neither have I," said Garry, closing his eyes, "but there's a first time for everything. The soldier's weapons are of no use to him now, and if you're okay with it, I think that we can use them for our own defense." His skin crawled as he said this. The idea made Ib's skin crawl too, but she nonetheless gave her approval. The soldier's rifle had jammed and was of no use, but they were able to harvest a partially loaded handgun, a spare magazine for said gun, and a grenade.

Over the course of three days, the two of them had gone from refusing to touch other people's abandoned supplies to stealing from the dead. But at least they were alive.

That night, Ib and Garry sat by a tiny fire Garry built, having eaten the closest thing to a square meal they had had in days. "Hey Ib," Garry said, "this might be a strange question, but do you think that these monsters have any sort of free will, or do you reckon they're just unthinking, unfeeling drones?"

"Wait – What do you mean?" Ib responded, slightly confused.

"Well, you recall how, say, Mary at least _seemed_ to be able to think for herself and have feelings like an actual person? Do you think the other monsters are also like that, or are they completely mindless, like zombies or robots?"

"Um, I'm not sure…" Ib slowly replied, trying to think back on all her experiences. "What makes you ask?"

"I dunno," said Garry. "It just popped into my head. My guess is that they're just mindless drones. I could be wrong, but I doubt it. Anyway, we better get ready for the rest of the night."

With that, they put out the fire and pulled out their small blanket. As they had done previously, the two of them took turns standing watch while the other tried to sleep.

* * *

><p>The next day, Ib awoke with heartburn and abdominal pain. An improperly packaged piece of beef jerky from last night disagreed with her stomach. Although the pain wasn't unbearable, Garry volunteered to go out and see if he could find anything that might help. To ensure that Ib would be able to defend herself if the need arose, Garry left the handgun and grenade with her, only taking his twisted piece of rebar for his own defense. Garry promised to be back within an hour and then set off, leaving Ib behind in the building.<p>

An hour passed. There was no sign of Garry. Ib couldn't help but anxiously wonder if something had happened to him. Could she have just lost her close friend and partner in survival, all for a stomach ache? She felt guilty for having let Garry go out and try to find something to help her.

Her thoughts were interrupted by the sound of approaching footsteps. Could it be Garry? Ib peered up through a window to see, but what she saw made her instantly bolt back down: The footsteps were coming not from Garry, but a pair of patrolling statues, headed in her direction.

Ib broke into a cold sweat. Had they spotted her? Had they discovered their hideout? Even if they hadn't seen her, they might stop and investigate the building. The footsteps were growing louder. The statues couldn't have been farther than two or three blocks away. She had to act, fast.

Ib couldn't take any chances. Picking up the handgun at her side, she went over to the window. The gun felt heavy and awkward in her hands. Ib took aim, closed her eyes and pulled the trigger.

She missed. Worse still, she had effectively given away her location. The statues initially took cover but then began advancing more quickly and purposefully. Ib panicked and tried firing a second round, but the gun was out of ammunition. Fumbling with the spare magazine, she quickly realized that she had no idea how to reload it either. Her heart dropped into her stomach.

The statues were barely half a block away now and closing the distance rapidly. Frantically looking around, Ib remembered the grenade they had found. It was do or die by this point. Praying that grenades really worked the way shown in cartoons, Ib pulled the pin, double checked that she was about to throw the right part of the grenade, and hurled it out through the doorway before scrambling back and covering her ears.

She heard the statues begin to scramble and then a ear-splitting blast that shook the ground. Bits of the ceiling rained down. Ib went back to the doorway and peered out. To her elation, she saw the broken pieces of one of the statues scattered across the ground.

Something thrust an obsidian-colored gun barrel at her face. It was the other statue, which _had_ survived the grenade. Trembling, Ib raised her hands up in surrender. She wasn't sure whether she'd be killed on the spot or if it would take her away to who-knows-what terrible fate. Either way, it was all over.

For several, painfully long seconds, the statue simply stood there, its arm gun trained point blank at Ib. After what felt like an eternity, it reached its claw out to grab and drag her away, when all of a sudden a male voice shrieked in anger from behind the monster. It was Garry! Lunging at the statue, he struck it as hard as he could with his rebar rod, sending the monster reeling. It raised its arm cannon in defense, but before it could fire a second blow rendered that limb useless. Seizing the opportunity, Ib grabbed the statue's leg, causing it to trip. Cracked and crippled, the monster reached its fully-extended claw out towards Garry. Garry jumped back and then struck the statue two more times right where its head would've been. With a final, horrible-sounding _crack_, the statue stopped moving.

For a minute, Ib and Garry just stood there, staring in disbelief at the destroyed statue and what they had just done. Finally, Garry turned to Ib and said, "We better get going. Our hideout's location has been compromised. We need to find another place." Packing up their belongings, they left their old hideout for good and began searching for a new location to hunker down.

Even without the monsters roaming around, finding a good hiding place wasn't easy. It needed to be concealed but not impossible to find; accessible but not overly so; and sheltered but in a way that would allow them to see danger approaching. Additionally, the pair steered clear of buildings that looked like they already had other survivors in them. They weren't sure how others would react once they learned who they were. Perhaps they would rally around them. Perhaps they would shun them. Perhaps they would hand the two over to the monsters as a form of appeasement. Ib and Garry weren't going to take the risk.

Finally the pair found a suitable place amid the abandoned, shelled out buildings. Setting up camp, they spent the rest of the day huddled away in their new home. It was only at that point that the two of them realized they had left the spare pistol magazine behind, but it was too late to do anything about that now.

That evening, Ib and Garry settled in for another restless night. It was Garry's turn to be on lookout first, so Ib found a suitable place to bed down and closed her eyes. Before she could drift off, though, she began thinking back to the past two days' events. She recalled Garry's question about whether the monsters had minds of their own and thought back to what happened with the two statues that morning – how the second statue extended its arm out right before Garry killed it.

Something disturbing dawned on her. "Garry?" she said.

"Yes Ib?"

"I just realized something about that statue you killed earlier… When it reached its claw out towards you, it wasn't trying to grab you. I think it was holding its claw out in a 'stop' sign. It was trying to beg for mercy."

Garry paused. He thought back to the brief fight, and then recalled what happened after he kicked that mannequin head back in the Fabricated World. After a period of silence, he finally responded. "You can sleep through the entire night, Ib," he said. "I'm… I'm not going to be able to sleep anyway."

* * *

><p>Back at the gallery, Mary was still standing beside the pedestal and orb through though which Father projected his will, watching as more and more of her siblings streamed from the portal.<p>

"Unfortunately, our advance has gone a little slower than planned," Father said. "The humans' weaponry has only advanced further since I left them, and the presence of that small army base nearby meant the military arrived sooner than I would have liked."

Mary listened silently. She did not take any particular interest in the tactical aspects of the campaign, but she knew it all mattered in the end, somehow.

"Don't' worry, though," Father continued. "Although they might have bogged us down for now, that will soon change. The barrier above us deprives them of their biggest advantage: their air power. Meanwhile, more brothers and sisters continue to join the fight. And finally," Father said, directing Mary's attention to the giant portal being constructed, "we will soon be able to bring the behemoths onto the field. They will give us the edge we need."

"That is all very good, Father," Mary finally responded, "but what about Ib and Garry? Can't you put more resources into trying to find them? Are you simply going to forget about them?" Her tone hinted at her growing frustration with the manhunt.

"What do you mean?" returned Father, inwardly delighted by Mary's fixation on the pair. "Are the current patrols not enough?"

"I don't mean to be rude, but not at all! They've been within reach for days now, and yet we still haven't caught them!" she retorted with half-restrained discontent, concerned that he was not taking her seriously. "Father," she pleaded, "you need to put more effort into finding them! They're getting away with their crimes! Is this too much to ask for?!"

"I'm sorry, but it is. We'll catch them sooner or later, but the top priority right now is breaking the military stalemate, and I can't afford to divert more forces away from the front line. I'm afraid there will be no more discussion on the matter," Father coolly responded. In reality he could sense where the conversation was going, and he liked it.

Mary fell silent for a moment and thought. "In that case, Father," she slowly said, clenching her fist. "I'd like to go out and search for them myself. Let me do this, I promise, and I will find them and make them pay."

The glass orb almost seemed to smile. "You have my full and complete blessing, my child," Father stated with almost a warped sense of pride. Mary noticed that her palette knife's blade had suddenly doubled in length and appeared infinitely sharper. Father's tone changed from approving to almost enthusiastic. "Now, if this is what you want, go forth and give them what they deserve! They killed you, so it would only be fair if it was you who returned the favor," he exhorted.

Thanking Father for his approval, Mary began to set off with a small escort of statues and mannequin heads. Before she got far, though, Father called her attention back.

"One more thing," he said. "Tell me: why do Ib and Garry hate you?"

"They hate me because I'm not 'real,'" she responded.

"Yes, but _why _does that make them hate you?" Mary wasn't sure.

"They hate you because they envy and fear you. They fear your potential and what you are capable of. In their envy they dismiss you as a monster, but in reality you, as a painted being of the Fabricated World, are superior to them, perfect in a way unobtainable by them… and they know it. Now, you have the opportunity to prove their fear right."

* * *

><p><em>(This chapter turned out much longer and a little darker than I initially pictured it. I find that although I have a concrete outline all set for how I want the whole story to go, the bits and pieces - the individual chapters and paragraphs - often take on lives of their own as I write them... That's my take at least.)<em>


	5. An Encounter with Mary

Finally. After a day of searching, Mary and her sibling escorts found their two targets. They spotted Ib and Garry inside an abandoned convenience store, presumably scavenging for food and supplies. (Mary was aware that humans, unlike her, must eat in order to survive and do not do it merely for pleasure.) Now, they had their prey in their sights, and better yet, the two humans appeared to be completely oblivious to the perilous situation they faced.

All that was left was for Mary to move in for the kill. "Alright," she said quietly, turning to her escorts, "your work here is done. You can all go back to the fighting now. I will handle the rest by myself."

One of the mannequin heads looked back at her in alarm. Ib and Garry were armed and had killed no fewer than three siblings in the past few days. Confronting them alone would be unwise. It would be far safer for Mary to allow her escorts to remain with her and let them help her subdue the pair.

"I said, you can go now," Mary repeated with growing irritation.

The mannequin head persisted. She was being foolish! She would be outnumbered and was putting herself in grave danger! This would be a completely unnecessary risk!

"_I said!_" angrily snarled Mary. Her sharpened palette knife glinted in the light. Fearful of incurring her wrath, the mannequin head and the rest of the escort backed down and began to disperse.

Mary watched them as they left. This conflict, this injustice she needed to repay, was far too personal by this point to let anyone else handle or even help her. For anyone else to take part, even if they too had been wronged by Ib and Garry, would be to dilute the sense of personal justice to the point of meaninglessness. After all that had happened over the past few days, the crimes of these two humans could only be fully addressed if the retribution came from her hands and her hands alone.

Once all of her siblings were out of sight, Mary turned back to face the convenience store. "At long last," she said to herself with a sense of vindictive satisfaction, "we meet again… you two, and me."

* * *

><p>"Ib, have you found anything else that isn't junk food or alcohol?" Garry called out.<p>

"No. Nothing of use," she responded as she came back over to meet him. She was chewing on a small piece of candy she had found. Garry couldn't blame her.

The two of them surveyed the room. "Well, I think we've more or less covered this place," said Garry. He and Ib looked in their bag. Although they had found some items of nutritional value, mostly they had found only total junk food – potato chips, sweets, soda. The selection was definitely less than what they had found at the first store, and in addition it was also clear that they were not the first survivors to raid this particular shop.

Smiling wearily at his companion, Garry closed up the satchel and slung it over his shoulder. The two of them made their way to the door, when all of a sudden they ran into a familiar-looking young girl – far too familiar for their liking.

"Why hello there, Ib! Hello there, Garry!" the girl called out, grinning maniacally. She wore the same bold, green dress that they had last seen her in. "Do you remember me? Do you remember what you did to me?" Panicked, Ib and Garry backpedaled until they were flat against the wall behind them.

Mary took a step forward and drew a greatly elongated palette knife. "Of course you do!" she said with a twisted sort of cheerfulness, answering her own question. "You probably take pride in what you did!" As she spoke, a set of plastic-like vines slowly emerged in front of the exit, sealing it off. There was nowhere to hide, and now, nowhere to run.

Garry drew his piece of rebar. "You're – You're supposed to be dead!" he stammered, finally summoning the courage to speak.

"_I'm_ supposed to be dead?!" Mary retorted. "Yes, my father brought me back, but you say that _I'm_ the one who deserves death?! After everything you did, I think it's really the other way around!" She advanced another step. It was strange; Mary appeared no larger than she had been three years ago and consequentially was in fact now even little smaller than Ib, who being a human child had grown slightly since then. Yet somehow, the sight of her inspired more fear in Ib and Garry than ever before. Back in the Fabricated World, Garry had overpowered Mary with relative ease, but it was obvious to everyone that the coming fight was going to be very, very different.

Garry could tell that his makeshift weapon was failing to deter Mary whatsoever. Trying to think fast, he spied a discarded magazine on the ground and had an insane idea. Handing the rebar rod over to Ib, he grabbed the magazine, curled it into a tube, and set one end on fire with his lighter. "Stay back, painting!" Garry warned, holding the burning magazine out towards Mary, "or I'll give you the same fate we gave you last time!" In reality, he had no clue whether Mary herself could be ignited so easily or if it only worked that way with her painting, but it was at least worth a try.

Mary stopped. Something about Garry's words – the term he just called her, the unremorseful invocation of what he did to her – stung a certain part of her deeply, a part of her that still cared what they thought. Eyes filling with rage, Mary just stood there for a brief second, and she then lunged at Garry with her knife. Garry dodged out of the way just in time, and Mary's weapon instead wedged itself into the wall. As she struggled to get it free, he spun around and swung the burning magazine at her, but at the last moment Mary succeeded in freeing her knife and slashed the magazine in half. Startled, Garry fell backwards into a shelf, causing several bottles of alcohol to tumble to the ground and shatter. Burning bits of magazine scattered throughout the room, igniting several small fires. The embers had no more effect on Mary's person than they did on Ib or Garry.

Eyes gleaming with triumph, Mary raised her palette knife up into the air to plunge it into Garry's heart. Before she could strike the killing blow, however, she was caught off guard by the sight of Ib's rebar rod swinging towards her, forcing Mary to pull back from Garry and duck out of the way. The twisted metal bar just barely missed her head. Pressing forward, Ib prepared a second swing, but this time Mary was ready and used her knife to parry the attack. Ib stared in shock; not only had Mary somehow managed to block the larger and much heavier steel bar, but the palette knife had actually bitten into it slightly, leaving a small mark in the metal. Her surprised look caused Mary to smirk.

Getting back to his feet, Garry leapt back in and rejoined the fray. The fighting was like nothing any of the three had experienced before. Mary's weaponized art tool clashed with Ib's piece of twisted metal, Garry's human hands with Mary's fabricated fists. The two humans held a numerical advantage, but Mary had the edge in overall combat skill. Her small size gave her a slightly greater degree of agility than Ib and especially Garry, yet at the same time she now seemed to possess the strength of a full grown man. All the while, the fires burning around them began to spread, fueled in part by the spilled alcohol from the fallen bottles. Ib and Garry noted the flames with increasing alarm as smoke began to fill the room, but Mary appeared not to be the least bit concerned.

With a series of strikes, Mary managed to disarm Ib and cornered her against a counter. Elbowing Garry sharply in the abdomen to keep him from intervening, she prepared to slash her former friend's throat, but before she could strike Ib kicked Mary as hard as possible, sending her stumbling backwards. Regaining his stance, Garry seized the opportunity and tackled Mary to the ground, trying to wrestle away her knife. Ib joined in to help her friend, and working together, they began to out-muscle her. Just as the pair was about to succeed in prying the knife away, though, Mary managed to wrench it back from them and then broke free from their grasp.

Again the two sides stood off. "You've proven yourselves surprisingly good fighters," Mary growled as Ib scurried back to retrieve the piece of rebar. The light from the flames reflected in Mary's eyes, mirroring her inner mental state. "But it doesn't matter. Either I'll kill you myself, or we'll all burn in here together! I am _not_ going to let you get away!" With that she lunged back at the pair and renewed her attack, stabbing and slashing at them with incredible ferocity. Ib and Garry frantically tried to keep up but found themselves outmatched. Overpowered, they retreated behind a display rack, with Mary in close pursuit. Between Mary and the fires, it only seemed like a matter of time to Ib and Garry.

After half a minute of frantic dodging and retreating, though, they saw their chance to regain the initiative. Narrowly sidestepping a strike aimed for his chest, Garry seized Mary's wrist and tried a second time to pry away her weapon. Again Ib joined in, and this time they managed to wrestle the knife out of Mary's hands. Before she could snatch it back, Garry hurled it out of the window. Undaunted but losing all composure, Mary then tried to grab him and push him into the spreading flames. Garry reacted too quickly for her, though, and struck her forcefully in the upper torso. Careening backwards into a wall, Mary slammed her head against part of a display shelf and then slid down the wall, unconscious. The plastic vines blocking the exit – which had proven much more fire resistant than the vines of three years ago – withered away.

Ib and Garry looked over at the motionless Mary briefly before Garry turned and said "Come on! We need to get out!" They grabbed their satchel – which thankfully was untouched by the flames– and raced out of the building as fast as they could. Whatever would happen to Mary was not their problem.

Before they got too far, though, Ib happened to look back at the burning store. A deluge of memories and emotions burst forth in her. Recollections of Mary's first death flashed through Ib's head – how she just stood by and watched as Mary burned alive, the despair and sense of betrayal Ib saw in her eyes then. Then she remembered the scenes from her nightmare the night before the invasion, the images of Mary slowly approaching and treating Ib to the same fate. Last but not least, she recalled the old Mary – not the Mary who had just attacked them, but the sad, lonesome Mary they met three years ago who hid her inner unhappiness behind her cheerful personality and whose questionable actions stemmed from a desperate desire to escape and live a normal human life. All of this came rushing back to haunt Ib in that one moment.

Before her rational side could intervene, Ib turned around and raced back towards the convenience store at full speed. Garry looked back in alarm. "Ib! Ib! Where are you going?!" he shouted. He tried to run after her but tripped. Ib paid no attention and continued running as fast as she could.

Ib reached the burning building and went back inside. The thick grey smoke stung her eyes and made it almost impossible for her to breath. Through it she saw Mary still slumped against the wall, unconscious. Holding her breath, Ib grabbed Mary by her arms and began to drag her towards the exit, pulling as hard as she could. With some effort, she managed to get her out of the door and away from the burning building. Once Ib had pulled Mary to a safe distance, she ran back over to Garry, who was racing to meet her.

"What on Earth were you thinking?!" Garry worriedly exclaimed when he reached her, panting. "You could've gotten yourself killed! You –" he looked over, saw Mary sprawled out on the ground, and looked back at Ib. Garry felt his blood begin to boil. "You risked your life to save _Mary_?!" he said sharply. "Why – why the hell did you do that?! She was trying to _kill_ us, and thanks to what you just did she'll be able to _continue_ trying to kill us!" For the first time he could ever remember, Garry actually felt angry with Ib. He just couldn't believe that she would do something so _stupid_.

"I'm sorry," Ib simply whimpered as they began walking away. "I'm sorry…"

Garry closed his eyes. Part of him really wanted to just grab Ib by the collar and shake her. Instead, he took a deep breath, opened his eyes again, and looked back at his companion.

"It's okay, Ib," he said, putting his arm around her shoulder, "it's okay. Just… just don't ever do anything like that again."

* * *

><p><em>(That was one sharp palette knife...)<em>


	6. Disownment

"We can't keep going like this."

"What do you mean?" Garry asked. The pair had wandered into another area where heavy fighting had taken place. The corpses of human soldiers and the remains of various monsters littered the area. A burnt out tank lay not too far away from the broken remains of one of those tripod monsters, the same type as the one that attacked Ib and Garry when they were trying to flee the city.

"We can't keep going like this," Ib simply repeated. "They're going to catch us sooner or later, and then we're as good as dead."

Garry sighed. "You may be right," he said with a tone of resignation, "but I don't what to say or do except for keep trying to lay low and survive."

Ib initially didn't respond. She looked at the dead soldiers lying around her. The air smelled of death and decay. After a moment, she turned to Garry and asked, "Isn't there something we can do to help our side win?"

"I can't think of anything," Garry helplessly. "I mean, we need to be honest with ourselves; neither of us are fighters at heart. I'm surprised we've made it this far!"

"There isn't _anything_ at all?" Ib repeated almost pleadingly.

"I'm sorry Ib, I just don't know what to say," Garry stated. "I –" He looked down at the ground and spotted a rocket launcher. He then looked up at the aerial barrier and the building it was being projected from. Although he couldn't make out the details, he saw that the barrier appeared to emanate from a distinct, glowing structure on the building's roof.

An idea popped into his head. Could they possibly? – No, that wouldn't work. A head-on attack would be suicidal… But wait. Even if the building projecting the barrier (never mind the museum) was guarded, perhaps the buildings surrounding it – one of which appeared to be just the right height – might not be?

"I think I have a plan," Garry finally said as a grin appeared on his face. "It's so insane, it might even work."

* * *

><p>Mary awoke to the pain of a splitting headache. Groaning, she slowly opened her eyes and saw the purple-tinted sky above her. "Where – where am I?" she asked herself as she rubbed her head and began recalling the final moments of her fight with Ib and Garry, piecing together what happened.<p>

Still somewhat disoriented, she got back onto her feet and looked around. She was indeed outside. The store where the fight took place, now a burnt out shell, stood not too far away. Not a living soul was in sight, including –

No… _No!_

Ib and Garry had escaped while she was unconscious! All of her efforts, all of her searching, were now for naught! Infuriated at this revelation, Mary fell to her knees and screamed in frustration. "No! No, no, no!" she angrily shrieked to the world around her, slamming her fist against the ground as hard as she could. She had come so close to making Ib and Garry pay, only for them to escape at the last minute! How could this be?! This wasn't fair! This wasn't right!

Standing back up, Mary angrily kicked a piece of debris and cursed the two humans and the way the fight had gone. The frustration proved unbearable. If only those final moments of combat had gone just a little differently! If only Garry hadn't cheated by stealing her knife! If only she hadn't ordered away her–!

Wait… Mary paused. If she ordered her escorts to disperse… then _who _rescued her from the fire after she was knocked out? Why hadn't she simply perished in the flames? Obviously it couldn't have been her siblings, so that just left… Ib and Garry?

But how could that be?! Ib and Garry hated her! People don't save other people they hate! They only save their friends!… But again, if not them, then who else could have done it? Mary's anger dissolved into confusion. The situation simply did not make any sense to her.

Spotting her palette knife on the ground, she went over and picked it up before beginning the trek back to Father's base, trying to comprehend what just happened. "It couldn't have been them!" Mary thought to herself again and again. She knew very well that those two humans saw her as a monster and nothing more. There was no way they would have wanted to save her!… But once again, if not them, then who? No matter how hard she thought about it, she always returned to that same stumbling block.

Perhaps her escorts came back after the fight and dragged her out of the burning building? Yes, that must be it! For a brief moment, Mary felt like she had found the answer… but wait, wouldn't they have then waited by her for her to come to and made sure she was okay? The idea began to crumble. Back to square one.

The more Mary thought about the question, the more confused she became, and the more confused she became, the more she needed to think about it. "If Ib and Garry saved me," Mary pondered, "then that means that they must not fully hate me… But even if Father was wrong about them hating me, why did they act like they did? Why were they so willing to fight and so unremorseful?"

Maybe it was all part of some plot? That could explain why they would save her even if they hated her. Yes, that made some sense. But just as Mary was beginning to feel that she had made a breakthrough, she found a problem with that theory as well. What would Ib and Garry possibly have had to gain by saving her? Wouldn't they have wanted her dead? She was at a complete loss for a motive.

No matter how hard Mary thought about the conundrum, she still always found herself no closer to an answer than she was at the beginning.

By now, the issue was beginning to gnaw away at some of her basic assumptions about how the world worked. The previously firm foundation on which stood her understanding of humans and Father's conflict with them began to crumble. "If Ib and Garry don't fully hate me," she asked herself, "then perhaps the humans don't fully hate Father as much as he thinks they do? Perhaps humans aren't all bad?" She immediately scolded herself for thinking such a senseless and treasonous thought. Father wouldn't be happy if he heard that, and he knew best. Besides, that one possible act of kindness seemed like at best a one-off, the exception to the rule.

Mary's thoughts were interrupted by the sound of a baby crying, coming from inside one of the shelled-out buildings. The noise produced a strange, somewhat unfamiliar emotion in Mary that she wasn't particularly used to feeling. She struggled to find the word for it. Was it sadness? No, that wasn't it. That was certainly part of it, but it was sadness for someone other than her, and it incorporated… a desire to help? No, that didn't feel right either… Was it, "pity?" Yes! That's it! She was feeling pity! That was the word!… But wait. Why was she feeling pity for the humans? They were the enemy! She shouldn't be feeling this! Mary tried to push this sense of pity out of her mind and resumed walking, turning her attention back to the question of who saved her and why.

"It must have been some sort of plan to hurt me further. That is the only possible explanation." Mary said to herself. "That must be it… I guess." Still dissatisfied but having exhausted all possible explanations, she decided she needed to ask Father. Perhaps he could explain what was going on to her when she got back.

She eventually reached the area around the museum. Passing by the effectively-complete portal for the behemoths and the building with the crystalline structure projecting the aerial barrier, she entered the gallery and resumed her place next to Father's pedestal and orb. He was preoccupied by an unexpected human counteroffensive, and simply noted, "you're back."

Mary nodded. She remained silent for a minute, and then finally said, "I – I failed to capture Ib and Garry… I came very close and cornered them, but then Garry knocked me out, I think, and they got away."

"So it happened," Father simply replied. "Your siblings tell me that you angrily ordered your escorts to disperse once you tracked Ib and Garry down. I hope you now understand that it was an unwise decision."

"Yes Father, I do."

"Good. Don't worry, though. We will catch them sooner or later." Father said reassuringly. Another minute of silence ensued. The question of who saved Mary began to gnaw at her again, and she tried to figure out what the best way to tell Father would be.

Finally, she spoke. "Father… I think Ib and Garry also saved my life. I don't know why though."

"What did you say?!" Father suddenly seemed perplexed and perturbed. His attention began to shift from the combat over to Mary.

"Ib and Garry saved me, I think. The building we were fighting in was on fire, and yet instead of burning to death after being knocked out, I woke up outside of the building. One of them must have carried or dragged me to safety, for some reason. I don't know how else to explain it." Mary had hoped that Father would be able to explain the situation to her, but such hopes may have been premature.

"But – but, it couldn't have been Ib and Garry! You know they hate you! How do you know it wasn't the siblings who were escorting you who saved you?!" Father demanded disconcertedly.

"I ordered them away, remember, and even if they had come back to help me, they wouldn't have then just cut and run. Wouldn't they have waited for me to recover?" She could see that Father was as baffled and unsettled by the incident as she was.

"But how…" Father stammered, struggling to think of an explanation. The reality that Ib and Garry were indeed the only ones who could have saved Mary proved inescapable. "You're probably right, my child," he at last said with a hint of disgust, "it had to have them… but they definitely didn't do it because they suddenly care about you now… It must be part of some sort of scheme to undermine our campaign. They are trying to trick you into believing they no longer hate you! Don't fall for it for a second!"

Mary simply nodded. She herself had pondered the same possibility earlier. Still, the answer didn't satisfy her, but she wasn't about to complain.

A group of headless statues approached, dragging behind them a girl of about eleven or twelve and her two parents. They knew from pre-invasion surveillance that the girl was a classmate of Ib, yet in spite of dragging the family before a sibling who could speak the humans' language, initial interrogation efforts proved fruitless. Despite threats and beatings, the girl repeatedly insisted that she had only known Ib as a kind but slightly shy girl who was rumored to be a little eccentric, and that she knew nothing of Ib's time in the Fabricated World or her current whereabouts.

"They are of no use to us now," Father curtly stated. "Dispose of these humans and then return to your duties." The statues obeyed and prepared to execute the family.

Suddenly, Mary remembered the baby she heard crying earlier. If this girl took no part in or even knew about Ib's actions, then how was she or her parents any more guilty than that baby? "Wait!" she cried out. "We can't just kill them like that! What have they done wrong?!" The statues stopped and turned to face her.

"They are collectively guilty for all of the injustices their kind has inflicted on us!" retorted Father with a hint of surprised irritation. He found the outburst nothing short of disturbing and concerning.

"But Father!" Mary continued emphatically, "They themselves haven't done anything to hurt us, have they?! If we kill them, how are we any better than the humans?!"

"It is us against them, Mary! Give them a weapon, and they will as assuredly attack us as will their military! I thought you understood all of this!" Father sounded increasingly perplexed and annoyed.

"But Father –!" Without warning, the family took off running, trying to escape while their captors were distracted. The statues spun around and shot after them. One by one, the humans crumpled like ragdolls amid the hail of fire, with the father being the last to fall as he cradled his dying daughter.

And then there was silence. Looking on in horror, Mary began to panic as she sensed Father's attention shift from her over to the dead humans and then back to her. The air around her grew colder as his mood changed from perplexed irritation, to deepening suspicion, and finally to disgust and rage. "I see how it is," Father hissed. "_I_ see how it is! They _did_ fool you. You're on _their_ side now!"

"No, no! That isn't true, Father! That isn't true!" frantically pleaded Mary. "I'm on your side! The humans are the bad guys! I –"

"Don't lie to me, Mary!" he retorted, cutting her off. "We both know the truth, you traitor." He stopped briefly to collect his thoughts as Mary quaked in fear, too overwhelmed by dread and despair to open her mouth. "Of all my creations," he resumed in an angry snarl, "of _all_ my creations, I would have expected _you_ to know better than to fall for this sort of human trickery, but clearly I was mistaken! Ib and Garry have beaten you, spat on you, burned you alive, and yet after one false act of kindness you are ready to crawl back to the humans and beg for acceptance, as if they hate you any less than they did three years ago!" The words felt like knives digging into Mary's fabricated heart.

"But so be it," Father chillingly continued. "And as such… _get out!_ Get out of my sight and never come back! You are no longer welcome here! See how well your _human friends_ accept you!"

For a moment Mary just stood there as those words sank in, and then she burst out crying and took off running. The one entity who actually loved her, her one pillar of stability, had just disowned her, leaving her completely adrift. Her siblings offered no comfort either, for they too now saw her as a traitor. Just like that, they all turned their backs on her.

Partially blinded by tears and now hated by all sides, Mary burst out of the museum and ran as hard as she could in no particular direction, sobbing uncontrollably. Where she was running, she had no idea, nor did it matter. She cursed her escorts who had allowed her to dismiss them before the fight. She cursed that horrible sense of pity that brought her ruin and the crying infant who first planted it. She cursed Ib and Garry for having saved her at all. She cursed humanity. She cursed the day she was born and then the day she was reborn.

Most of all, she cursed herself.

* * *

><p><em>(Just to reiterate, Ib and Garry are not going to "go Rambo" in the next chapter. I have something sneakier in mind.)<em>


	7. Behemoth

_(For visual clarification, the city that this is taking place in isn't *that* large, so even its tallest buildings aren't *that* tall. You'll see why this is important.)_

* * *

><p>While the situation with Mary and her father was unfolding, a second, very different party was making its way towards the monsters' staging ground as well. Lugging along the large rocket launcher that they had found, Ib and Garry needed to take extra care not to be seen, dodging to the nearest hiding spot at the first sign of patrolling monsters. Nor did they dare use the rocket launcher in self-defense; it would waste what little ammunition they had been able to find and possibly give away their intentions. All of this slowed their trek down significantly.<p>

Despite these difficulties and more than one close call along the way, Ib and Garry eventually reached the area surrounding the museum and aerial barrier. Peering out from behind a corner, the two of them surveyed the monsters' staging grounds. The gallery itself was in ruins; apparently the monsters were not too concerned about the actual building. Still, it was under heavy guard, and every so often a new monster would trickle out of it. Besides the museum stood what could only be described as a giant, glowing abstract painting. After looking at it for a moment, Ib and Garry realized that it was a modified version of the _Fabricated World_ painting, adjusted for a more doorway like frame. It was clearly a portal of some sort… yet no monsters seemed to be coming from it, at least not yet.

Finally, Ib and Garry turned their attention to the building that the aerial barrier was emanating from. It was an office building about fifteen stories in height. They still couldn't see what exactly was producing the actual barrier due to their poor vantage point, though. A dozen or so headless statues guarded the building. Confronting them would be suicide. However, not too far away stood another building of similar height, and just as Garry had suspected, it appeared completely unguarded. This building would play the key role in what they had in mind.

The pair's plan was fairly simple. Evading detection from the statues guarding the aerial barrier and any other monsters they might see, Ib and Garry would make their way to this unguarded building, climb to the highest level, or better yet the roof, and then use the rocket launcher to disable or destroy whatever apparatus was projecting the barrier. In doing so, they could thus leave Guertena's entire army vulnerable to airstrikes.

All of this was assuming, of course, that they would be able to make it to the building and then score a direct hit. The scheme was much easier said than done.

Before the two of them could act, a group of monsters suddenly turned in the pair's direction. Panicking, Ib and Garry ducked back behind the wall and hid in a large doorway, praying that they hadn't been spotted. They listened with a growing sense of dread as they heard the monsters start to move towards them. The sound of them approaching grew louder and louder. Preparing for the worst, Garry loaded the rocket launcher and raised it up, hoping to take at least a few of Guertena's creations with him if they attacked.

Yet to his and Ib's surprise and great relief, the monsters simply passed right by their hiding spot, seemingly unaware of their presence. The two of them peered out from the doorway and saw the monsters continuing away from them. Ib and Garry realized that they must be reinforcements headed for the front lines. Of course! How had they not thought of that? Shortly afterwards, they heard another group march past them.

Still, this posed a problem. In order to continue, Ib and Garry would need to cross the path of these departing reinforcements, and they could not take any chances of being seen. They took several minutes to figure out the pattern of how and when the reinforcements left, and when the moment seemed right, they dashed across to the other side of the street. Ib's heart dropped into her stomach when she thought she saw a departing mannequin head begin to turn, but the two of them reached the safety of the other side just in time to avoid being seen.

From there, Ib and Garry made their way over to the building they intended to use without much incident. After double checking the area for more monsters, they found an open door and slipped into the battle-scarred structure. It appeared unoccupied. The inside of the building was dark and cold. Realizing that they couldn't use the elevator given the lack of power, Ib and Garry resigned themselves to having to take the stairs to the top level and began the arduous journey up. They trekked up one flight of stairs after another, trying to make as little noise as possible and resting only when absolutely necessary. Even now they could not be sure the building was as empty as it first appeared.

Finally, they reached the top. To their delight, they found that the building had roof access. From there, Ib and Garry saw their target directly for the first time. The barrier was being produced by a large, purple, crystalline structure that gave off a faint glow. It looked like it had simply been mounted there to take advantage of the building's height, without any regard for how well it fit with the original structure. There were absolutely no monsters guarding the top of the building; Guertena apparently presumed that they would be unnecessary.

All Ib and Garry had to do now was fire the rocket and pray that it would find its mark. They had two pieces of ammunition: the one that was already loaded into the rocket, and a spare one they had managed to scavenge back at the battlefield. To blunder twice would not be an option.

Garry began to settle into a suitable firing position. As he was doing so, Ib asked, "Have you ever handled something like this before?"

"No," Garry replied sheepishly.

"Do you know what the range of this thing is?"

"No."

"Do you know how to use it?"

"Well… I've seen it in movies… and I think I've figured it out. Don't worry, Ib." Garry settled back into his firing position and resumed aiming. In reality, he was just as unsure as Ib was.

All of a sudden the two of them heard a deep, booming thud in the distance and felt the ground shake a little. It was followed by another, slightly louder thud, and then another, louder still. Garry lowered the rocket launcher as his heart began to race. Staring at each other in horror, he and Ib realized that the thudding noises were actually footsteps. Something very large was headed their way.

Paralyzed by fear, Ib and Garry began to tremble as they tried to figure out what to do. With every passing moment the booming footsteps came closer and the shaking they produced grew more intense. Part of them wanted to flee the building and run, but doing so would only expose them even more to danger. They briefly thought about trying to attack whatever was approaching with the rocket launcher, but they guessed that this monster was probably much too big to bring down with one or two small rockets, and firing would give away their position. They dared not even peer over the edge for fear of being seen.

By this point, the footsteps were almost deafening, and each step seemed to create a minor earthquake. Whatever was producing them was almost at the building Ib and Garry were on top of. It was too late for them to do anything other than hide in place and pray that it hadn't detected them. Beginning to fear the worst, they listened in silent dread as whatever this monster might be reached the front of the building. The two of them held their breath. Moments felt like centuries.

The booming footsteps simply passed by their perch, without stopping or even slowing down. Whatever monster was producing them, just like the departing groups of reinforcements had been, appeared to be completely unaware of Ib and Garry's presence. The pair listened as the thunder-like thuds began to grow quieter and quieter as the monster moved away from them, and they felt an immense sense of relief. For the second time that day, the two of them had escaped detection right when all seemed lost.

Garry decided to wait on the rocket launcher until whatever monster this might be was farther away. When footsteps finally sounded distant enough, he picked the weapon back up and resumed aiming, his mind returning to the main task. His palms began to sweat. As he had admitted to Ib, Garry had never handled anything like a rocket launcher before. He also realized at that moment that even though he had managed to find a spare round should the first one miss, having to fire a second round would greatly increase their chances of being caught. The more he thought about it, the more he saw that for all intents and purposes, he needed to succeed on the first try if he wanted a decent shot at survival.

When he finally felt ready, Garry took a deep breath and pulled the trigger.

The rocket shot out of the launch tube with a tremendous blast and sailed off towards the target.

It hit! The rocket struck the crystalline structure head-on and exploded, and the entire thing shattered like glass. The purple barrier above Ib and Garry vanished instantly, and for the first time in days, the sky appeared its natural color. The aerial barrier was no more.

Ib and Garry had no time to celebrate, though. It dawned on them that they hadn't fully thought through an escape plan. They needed to get out of the building immediately, before the monsters might cut off their escape. The two of them raced down the flights of stairs as fast as possible. Even at full speed, though, the descent took several, painfully long minutes. Every passing moment seemed to lower their chances of coming out alive. All Ib and Garry could do was hope it wasn't too late and continue running as fast as they could.

Finally, they reached the ground floor and bolted out the exit. To their surprise and relief, the statues guarding the aerial barrier building were in disarray, seemingly unsure whether to remain in place, brace for further attacks, seek out the attacker, or prepare for imminent bombardment. Amid the confusion Ib and Garry darted out of the area. As they ran farther and farther away, a sense of achievement washed over them. No longer were they merely reacting to a hostile world in a frantic effort to survive. More so than ever before, they felt like they had control over their own destiny. The sensation was empowering. They –

The two of them suddenly stopped dead in their tracks. They found themselves in the shadow of something colossal. Towering before them was a giant, golem-like entity that resembled an immense, vaguely humanoid abstract sculpture come to life. It was by far the biggest monster they had ever seen, dwarfing even Red-Eyes. Gulping, Ib and Garry realized that this must have been what was shaking the ground before.

It turned around.

It looked down at them.

It released an ear-splitting roar and then began advancing towards the pair.

Panicking, Garry hurriedly raised the rocket launcher up and fired the second round at the monster. The rocket shot through the air and smashed into the monster's upper body. To Ib's and Garry's horror, it only left a black mark and several minor cracks. The monster bellowed in rage and raised one of its massive arms to crush the two humans. Ib and Garry darted out of the way just in time as a club-like fist smashed into the place they were standing a second ago. The impact shook the ground so hard that Ib and Garry struggled to keep their footing.

The two of them began running for their lives. The monster took off after them. Ib and Garry began to panic as they heard its booming footsteps catching up with them. Despite its size the behemoth proved surprisingly swift and easily capable of outrunning them. No matter how hard Ib and Garry ran, it always seemed to gain on them. They tried weaving through narrow alleyways where the monster couldn't fit, but even then the monster would always somehow catch up.

Before long the behemoth was in striking distance. It again raised its arm up and tried a second time to crush the humans, again just barely missing. This time though, the power of the impact was such that it almost knocked Ib and Garry down. Garry was able to keep his balance, but the shock-wave caused Ib to lose her footing and fall down. Garry watched in horror as the monster raised its foot to stomp on his companion, but Ib was able to get up and scramble out of the way just in time to avoid being squashed. It then tried to swat at her but missed again. The chase resumed.

Realizing they had little hope of outrunning the monster directly, the two of them ducked into another alleyway and this time tried to hide in it, knowing the monster couldn't fit there. From inside the alleyway, they saw the behemoth stop and heard it roar in frustration. For a moment, they felt they had escaped the immediate danger.

All of a sudden there was a loud crashing noise from outside the alley. Small bits of masonry rained down from the side of the alleyway. Then there was another crash, and more, larger pieces of debris rained down. To their horror, Ib and Garry realized that the monster was trying to destroy the structures that formed the alleyway so that the debris would bury the two of them alive. The behemoth struck the building a third time. "Garry, watch out!" Ib shrieked as she saw several large chunks of concrete falling towards them. The pair scrambled out of the way as the giant pieces of debris smashed into the place they were standing a second ago. Realizing they couldn't hide in the alleyway, Ib and Garry began to run away from the behemoth towards the other end of the alley. Seeing this, the monster grabbed a chunk of masonry and hurled it down the alleyway towards them. Crashing into the ground, it bounded towards Ib and Garry, but they were able to make it out of the alleyway and turn a corner just in time, getting out of the debris' way at the last moment.

The chase continued for another minute or so. Turning a corner, Ib and Garry found that they had hit a dead end. The paths they could have escaped through were blocked off by rubble. Turning around, they saw the behemoth advancing towards them. They were trapped. The monster slowed its pace down, as if to relish the moment. Several smaller monsters appeared as well, seeming to keep a careful distance from the behemoth. All of them drew closer and closer. This time it really would be the end. Ib and Garry embraced each other out of fear and prepared for death.

All of a sudden, a missile slammed into the behemoth's back and exploded, seeming to take it by surprise. Astonished and feeling a strong sense of déjà vu, Ib and Garry looked up and saw a fighter jet streaking off in the sky. It was the military! It was just like the first day of the invasion with the gargoyle and the attack helicopter! In a moment of elation they realized the military was already taking advantage of the aerial barrier's sudden disappearance. The jet doubled back, fired another missile that struck the behemoth in the shoulder, and strafed the smaller monsters with machine gun fire, sending them scattering. Roaring in pain, the wounded behemoth ripped off a piece of masonry from a nearby building and hurled it after the jet, but by that point the plane was much too far away. Another fighter jet flew in and joined the attack.

Seizing the opportunity, Ib and Garry ran back towards the distracted behemoth and ducked underneath its legs as it tried in vain to swat at a third missile. Bits of stone and metal rained down from the monster onto Ib and Garry as the missile exploded. The two of them bolted as more planes came in and as the airstrikes slowly began to bring the behemoth down.

All around them, Ib and Garry saw more airstrikes beginning to take place. Fighter jets and ground attack craft swooped down and strafed and fired missiles at critical areas of Guertena's forces. The monsters had depended fully on their aerial barrier for protection and were now completely unprepared for what was happening. Several gargoyles flew up to try to intercept the fighter jets, but they were completely unable to keep up with them and were quickly shot down.

One of the airstrikes struck the now-exposed Guertena Art Museum itself. The blast collapsed the structure, destroying Guertena's control orb. Instantly the monsters' command and control system disintegrated, and coordination between them fell apart. Most of them tried to fight on anyway, but between the airstrikes and the loss of the command structure, their positions began to crumble. A growing number of them began to rout and retreat back towards the large portal that they had only just finished for the behemoths.

At long last, Ib and Garry could see the light at the end of the tunnel! At long last, it seemed at the moment, their ordeal was finally drawing to a close.

* * *

><p><em>(Several things I want to note here. First of all, for someone who saw humans collectively as the enemy as vehemently as he did, Guertena appears unprepared for the actual possibility of guerrilla resistance. Regardless, I feel sort of bad for bringing this phase of the conflict to such an abrupt end, but it needed to be done in order to advance the story, and I felt like I needed to give Ib and Garry some agency in the outcome. Finally, just to be clear, this story isn't over yet. We're past the halfway mark, but there's still more coming.)<em>


	8. Everyone Hates Her

The mood within the army headquarters was one of surprised elation. Just as their counteroffensive was beginning to falter and the new portal had produced the largest monster yet, the aerial barrier had suddenly disappeared, finally allowing the military to bring its air power to bear. A strike on the museum seemed to decapitate the monsters' command structure, and now they appeared to be in chaotic retreat. Active resistance only came from several holdout pockets. For the officers, most of whom had resigned themselves to a long campaign with no guarantee of victory, it felt like they could finally see the light at the end of the tunnel.

General Landon, though, was not ready to declare victory just yet. Although he too was delighted by the sudden turn of the events, there was still unfinished business as far as he was concerned. "Major?" he called out to one of the junior officers around him.

"yes sir?"

"Send out several light transport helicopters to conduct a preliminary search for Ib and Garry, and if you find them alive bring them back here. Ground forces will conduct a more thorough search later if necessary, but the sooner we can find them or their remains, the better. Be sure to provide the pilots with the descriptions offered by Ib's mother as well as their photographs." He added quietly, "I have a feeling they are alive."

"Yes sir," acknowledged the officer, "but if I might ask, why should we be so concerned about fulfilling the wishes of a random civilian?"

Landon stared crossly at the major, who had a reputation asking these sorts of questions. "First of all," he stated, "Ib's mother is not a random civilian; she is a civilian who has provided us with valuable intelligence. Second and more importantly, if Ib and Garry are alive, I want certain information from them about their experiences and the Fabricated World in general. Do you understand?"

"I understand, sir," replied the officer. He saluted and started to walk off, but then General Landon called him back. "One other thing," he stated. "As a secondary objective, also be on the lookout for what _appears to be_ a young girl with long, golden blonde hair and bold blue eyes, wearing a solid green dress with a blue ribbon. She must be wearing that exact clothing. Her name is Mary, and if you see her, capture her alive and bring her back to HQ."

He handed the major an image of the original "Mary" painting. "Mary isn't actually human. She's really another one of the monsters, derived from Guertena's last painting before he committed suicide. For this reason she is likely high up in the monsters' ranks or at least of great symbolic value. Ib's diary claims that she and Garry killed Mary back in the Fabricated World by burning her painting, but early reports from the police who first responded to the attack indicate that she or at least a replica of her is very much alive and was present for the invasion."

"You intend to put her on trial for war crimes or something like that?"

"Yes, but before that I also want intelligence from her as well. Even though she didn't appear to play a direct role in the combat, the little witch probably has a good deal of useful information. Remember, the monsters might be retreating now, but they can always regroup and come back when they are ready. Even if we destroy that portal they're using, what's there to stop them from opening another one? No. This conflict will only be over once we've gone over and taken care of whatever the hell is on the other side of that portal."

* * *

><p>At long last, Ib and Garry felt, the end was in sight. The two of them were slowly making their way out away from the destroyed museum and closer to the edge of the conflict zone, where perhaps the military would find and rescue them sooner. All around them, Guertena's forces were crumbling. The two of them did not know about the control orb specifically or its destruction, but they knew that victory belonged to the military. Ib and Garry could hear – and occasionally see – monsters retreating towards the staging grounds, presumably towards that large portal. It was ironic; Ib and Garry figured that the monsters likely built that portal to bring that Behemoth onto the field and give their forces the advantage, and yet now it was facilitating a chaotic escape for those that had survived. Meanwhile, scattered here and there were the remains of dead and destroyed monsters – broken statues, shattered mannequin heads, demonic versions of the painted ladies sprawled motionless on the ground. At one point, they even saw the remains of what appeared to be Red Eyes, blasted apart by an airstrike. The sight of its decapitated, still-grinning blue head inspired a mixture of revulsion, relief, and triumph in Garry.<p>

A number of different feelings flowed through Ib and Garry as they continued walking. First and foremost was an enormous sense of relief. After several, long, days of desperation and fear they could finally see daylight; they had survived. Their thoughts also turned to their families and homes. Ib in particular found herself filled with a combination of hope and worry as to her parents. On top of that there was the general feeling of triumph; their side had won. Last but not least, Ib and Garry felt empowered, having the sense that they contributed significantly to their sides' victory. They realized that in bringing down the aerial barrier, they helped save not only themselves but all those around them.

Still, the two of them knew that they were not completely out of the woods just yet. Even though the monsters were in flight, there was always the possibility that one of them would, in a moment of opportunistic hostility, kill Ib and Garry as it ran by. After all, they were not mindless drones. At that moment, they heard a group of retreating monsters headed straight in their direction. Not wanting to take any chances, Ib and Garry ducked into an abandoned building and hid. By this point it was almost second nature to them, so it was not too alarming.

Little did they realize someone – or something, depending on who you ask – else was hiding in there.

Inside the building, Ib and Garry hunkered down and waited for the threat to pass. Sure enough, the monsters ran right past them, not seeming to suspect their presence at all. However, as soon as Ib and Garry could no longer hear the monsters, they suddenly had the sensation of being watched. They realized they were not alone in the building. For a moment, everything was silent. They heard soft, light footsteps from behind them, and then they stopped.

Garry spun around. "You!" he angrily shouted. Cautiously peering out at them from behind a pillar was none other than Mary, startled and alarmed by her suddenly being discovered, and now seemingly frozen in place out of fear. Something about her appeared different, though. Her golden blonde hair was in disarray and almost unkempt. Her dress was wrinkled and disheveled. Whereas in their last encounter she had come in a position of strength, her face now bore signs of despair and hopelessness.

Mary panicked and bolted for the exit. Brandishing his rebar rod, Garry gave chase, shooting Ib a stern glance warning her not to intervene. As she burst out of the building, Mary looked over her shoulder, and to her horror saw Garry not too far behind her, steel beam in hand. Running as hard as she could, she ducked into narrow alleyways and took every twist and turn available to her in a frantic effort to get away, yet no matter what she couldn't seem to lose her pursuer. If anything he was gaining on her. Trailing behind both of them was Ib, concerned yet careful to keep a good distance.

The chase continued for another minute or so. Taking her eyes off the road to glance backwards at her pursuer, Mary tripped on a piece of debris and tumbled to the ground with a thud. By the time she began to get up, Garry was just seconds away from being within striking distance. There was no hope of getting away.

"Okay, fine!" Mary angrily spat. "You know what? I give up! _You win_! I lose! Just… just kill me now and get it over with!"

Garry stopped and stared in shock at Mary. Somehow, this was just the last thing he would've expected Mary to say, even in this situation.

"There's nothing more for you to take from me!" she continued. "My father's attack has failed, you've gotten away your crimes, and now, thanks to you, my father thinks I'm disloyal and hates me. There isn't anything left you can take from me!" Ib caught up with them at this point. She couldn't believe her ears either. Ib and Garry knew that Mary hated them… but this?

Mary noticed their confusion. "You really are ignorant, aren't you?" she observed sharply. "Very well then, before you kill me let me explain just how much harm you've caused." She took a deep breath. "Back when I first met you three years ago," Mary stated in a tone of bitter resignation, lips trembling, "all I wanted was to have a human life with human friends. I was lonely! My dad provided me with sketchbooks and dolls, but he wasn't always fun to be with and would never play with me. The same was true for my siblings. I love them and they at least used to love me, but except for the dolls I could never play games with them or even have meaningful conversations. You could talk _to_ them but couldn't talk _with_ them! And for whatever dumb reason, I didn't believe my father when he told me about how mean and selfish your kind is!"

At this point, Garry cautiously put away his rebar rod and tried to look at Mary's face. She angrily turned her head away, but he was able to see that she was… crying? He never had guessed Mary, a painting, even had that capacity.

"So, I begged my father again and again to give the world another chance and at least let me see it, and finally he agreed to let me go out and join your world. His only condition was that he would bring two humans into the Fabricated World and have me switch places with one of them." Mary stood up and paused a moment, seeming to hesitate. "Yes," she slowly conceded, turning back to face Garry, scowling, "you were the one I intended to replace, and now that I think about, I can see why you might not have liked that… but just bear with me for a moment!" Her voice rose again. "You already got to live your entire life in the human world, and is it my fault that that's what I needed to do?! You probably would've done the same thing in my situation!" she bitterly exclaimed. She shifted her attention to Ib. "As for you!" Mary angrily stated, pointing an accusing finger at her, "What's your excuse?! All I wanted was to be your friend! All I wanted was to become your sister! Was that too much to ask for?"

Feeling his blood begin to boil, Garry glared furiously at Mary and opened his mouth to retort, but before he could say anything, he felt Ib squeezing his hand. She wanted him to please wait and let Mary finish whatever else she had to say. Hesitating for a moment, Garry took a deep breath and reluctantly complied, holding his tongue.

Mary resumed. "But that's not the main point! So my father brings you into our world, and what did you two do? You rejected me! You saw me as a monster! You burned me alive and then thought it was all okay because I wasn't human! Are my feelings, my life, and my pain really worth that much less to you simply because I'm 'just a painting'? Apparently yes! They don't matter one bit to you!

"And so," she bitterly continued, glaring at them, "I only began to hate you because it was clear you hated me. Is that not what you humans do, hate those who hate you back? When Father brought me back to life, he then launched this attack on your world so he and I could have some form of justice. One can only take so much abuse before they need to fight back! You just think we're all monsters, but isn't that how humans act too? Is it not human to hit back at those who hit you first? And yet even this form of repayment has been denied to us, too! My father's forces are beaten, and the crimes remain unpunished!

"But it doesn't end there!" Mary then tearfully spat. "After our fight, for whatever reason, one of you decided to save me from the burning building while I was unconscious." She suddenly slowed down, as if struggling for the right words. "When I woke up, I – I couldn't understand why you would help me since you hate me, and I became very confused. That led to bad, disloyal thoughts and feelings entering my mind, and when my father found out he –," Her voice choked further. "He – _he became angry and told me to leave and never come back_!... If your goal was to bring me down by confusing me, I hope you're happy that you succeeded!" Ib suddenly felt a horrible, sinking feeling in her gut. Is this what her efforts had led to? Was this her fault? Did Mary deserve this?

"I don't know if you humans see it differently," Mary bitterly stated, "but to me, none of this fair." She began hyperventilating. "All I wanted were friends, and it now comes to this?!" she angrily demanded. "I don't see anything I could have done differently, but even if there was, I did not deserve this fate, did I? So why did it happen?!" Her voice rose even more and her breathing quickened further. "I'll tell you. It's because my father was right! This whole world isn't fair!" Her voice reached a shrill pitch. Enunciating each word, she tearfully screamed, "_Your world isn't fair!_" at Ib and Garry.

Following that Mary fell silent for a moment, panting heavily as if she had put all her remaining energy into what she just said. She looked exhausted and even defeated, in fact. Ib and Garry stared in stunned silence as she gathered her thoughts. "But he hates me too now," she finally managed to say between pants, lowering her head dejectedly. "Everyone hates me. You hate me. My father hates me. Your world hates me. I don't know anymore. Maybe you're right. Maybe I am just a monster." Mary buried her face in her hands, crying quietly. "Maybe I am just a monster," she repeated to herself a second time. "That is all… I'm done rambling… you can kill me now. Just make it quick."

At that moment, Ib couldn't stop herself. She went over to Mary and embraced her, trying to comfort the very entity which days earlier had tried to kill her and Garry. Still quietly crying but less intensely now, Mary lifted her head slightly but otherwise didn't react. A moment later Ib let go and backed away. There was another period of silence. Garry found himself completely unsure of how to think or feel about everything he saw and heard.

They heard the sound of an approaching helicopter in the distance. "Mary," Garry stated, "that's probably the human army approaching. You need to run!"

Mary just stood there despondently, staring at the ground. "What's the point? There's nothing left," she responded dejectedly, almost absentmindedly.

The sound of the helicopter grew louder. "Mary! You need to run!" Garry repeated with greater urgency. "They are probably going to take you as a prisoner if they see you!" He removed his coat and held it out towards Mary. "Here! Take this and use it to disguise yourself! We won't tell them about you!"

Mary still didn't respond or even seem to notice. By now the helicopter was in plain sight and rapidly approaching. "Mary! Run, goddamn it! Run! Before I change my mind!" Garry angrily shouted. He threw his coat into Mary's face. As if snapping out of trance, she finally turned around and began running as fast as she could, not even bothering to fully put on the coat so much as draping it over her like a cloak.

Watching Mary fade into the distance, Garry muttered to himself "you're such a pushover." He and Ib then turned around towards the helicopter. It seemed to have spotted them and was descending to pick them up. At long last the ordeal had come to an end, it seemed.

The helicopter's crew had also spotted a blonde girl running away who matched the description of their secondary target. However, they saw she was not wearing the exact right clothes. The general had been specific.

* * *

><p><em>(I have to say, Mary is the hardest character for me to write dialog for due to her speaking style being so different from my own. If I hadn't been planning this chapter so far in advance it would have been almost impossible.)<em>


	9. Chess Pieces

_(Insert obligatory macaron reference here)_

* * *

><p>"Ib, have you ever heard of dehumanization or the concept of 'the other?'"<p>

"No?"

Garry paused as he thought about how to best explain it. "It's… it's a concept in social science that describes how we view the people we see as enemies, how we stop caring about their lives and feelings," he said, struggling to articulate the idea. It proved surprisingly hard to describe. "Picture someone you don't like. It doesn't matter who. Suppose something bad happens to them. It wouldn't bother you as much as if it happened to a friend, would it?"

Ib hesitated. "Uh… No, it wouldn't?" she finally responded almost guiltily.

"Right. In fact, if you hate the person, it might not bother you at all… It's like that, except even more intense and applying to an entire group of people. You stop viewing 'the other' as human and demonize them. It becomes okay to hurt or even kill them. Any empathy you might have shuts off. They have been dehumanized, as my professors would say. To top it off… when you view some group as being 'the other,' you often aren't even fully aware of it. It will just feel completely natural." Garry could tell that he wasn't doing a very good job explaining. Even as he felt the need to talk about this, part of him was growing increasingly uncomfortable with where it was all going.

Ib still looked confused but now also somewhat disturbed. "Wait… So who is 'the other' then?"

"Well, it depends on whose perspective we looking at. For the Nazis – you've learned about them, right? – it was the Jews. During times of war, each side will view the other as, well, 'the other.' And for our situation…" Garry trailed off and looked back at Ib. "Am I making any sense?"

"Sort of… Kind of… Not really."

Garry sighed. "It's okay. Frankly, most adults don't understand it either."

At that point a door opened. A soldier stepped in. "They are ready to see you," he simply said.

* * *

><p>Escorted down a small hallway, Ib and Garry were led to the officers' quarters. There, waiting for them, were Ib's parents alongside a high-ranked military figure. Eyes growing watery, Ib's parents stood up. Ib ran over to them, and they tearfully embraced. "You're safe!… Thank God, you're safe!" softly exclaimed her father as he hugged his daughter.<p>

Never before had Ib been so happy to see her parents.

After several seconds they released. Ib's mother looked into her daughter's eyes. "I saw your diary," she quietly admitted, still crying from happiness but now speaking with a twinge of guilt. "I gave it to the general to provide him with information on the situation. I'm sorry. Forgive me. And don't worry. We believe you!"

Ib suddenly wasn't sure how to feel. On one hand, all her secrets – her fears, hopes, private thoughts, musings about friends, the boys she had crushes on – had just been yanked away and revealed to the world. But then again… At least they believed her now.

At that point, the military officer stepped forward. "Oh, this is General Landon," Ib's mother stated, introducing him to Ib and Garry. "He is the man overseeing the military operation… We owe him immensely." The general reached down and shook Ib's hand before offering his hand to Garry. Garry hesitated and then took it cautiously; as grateful as he was, he suddenly found his old distrust of authority kicking back in.

Landon couldn't help but smirk slightly. "Typical counter-cultural artsy type," he thought to himself. "Never appreciates the armed forces. It's a shame he is polluting the mind of this impressionable young girl." With that, he turned back to Ib's parents and said, "Now, I hope you don't mind, but I must speak with Ib and Garry by myself now. There are some important issues I need to ask them about, and I need their help for the final steps of this conflict. Thank you again for your service."

Ib's parents hesitated a moment before deferring silently and leaving the room.

Once they were gone, the general turned back to Ib and Garry. "Okay, now we can get down to business," he stated. "As your mother said, I am General Eric Landon, commander of the forces fighting these monstrosities. I understand that you two are at the center of this war, and my men and I were keen on finding you. But before we go into anything else, I want you to tell me all that happened while you were in the invasion's center. This isn't just a matter of curiosity; what you have to offer is genuine military intelligence."

"Let me guess: you wanted to use us as bargaining chips," thought Garry to himself as he and Ib gathered their thoughts. For her part, Ib noticed with moderate irritation that the general was directing most of his attention towards Garry, as if she were just an unimportant tag-along. She knew why already: Garry was a grownup and she was not, period. Regardless, the two of them told Landon about their ordeal. They told him about how they first learned of the invasion, about their failed getaway attempt, how they hid in ruined buildings and scavenged from abandoned stores. They told him about their close calls with various monsters, how they brought down the aerial barrier, and their encounter with the behemoth. They did not tell him about either encounter with Mary.

"Impressive!" Landon remarked when they had finished. "Despite being the monsters' main targets, you managed to hide right underneath their nose. Your resourcefulness was astounding, and your extremely bold work in taking down their aerial barrier was nothing short of critical to our success. You have our full gratitude." Ib and Garry nodded in thanks, flattered but unsure where he was going.

"However," he added, "this war is not over just yet. The monsters may have retreated for now, but their giant portal still stands, ready for them to return once they are ready again. Even if we destroyed it, who's to say our friend Guertena couldn't simply open another one later? To win this campaign, we must use that portal to bring the fight to that vile world of his and neutralize his monsters at the source!"

Ib and Garry were taken aback. This general – he was going to… invade the Fabricated World?! It took a second for this to really sink in.

Landon continued. "And this is where you come in. In order for this operation to succeed, we need to have some sense of where we're going and how that place works, especially since this isn't just some other country on this world. We can't go in blind." He paused a moment and leaned in slightly. Only at that point did Ib and Garry realize just how physically imposing a figure he appeared. "You are the only humans ever to have set foot in the Fabricated World, and if we want to ensure victory," he stated, looking them in the eye, "I need you, Ib and Garry, to act as advisers and help guide our forces, both ahead of and on the campaign.

Gulping, Ib and Garry found themselves at a loss for words, unsure what to say. "Thank-thank you, sir" Garry finally stammered anxiously, "We're – we're honored… but… with all due respect, do-do we have a say in this? I mean – we would be happy to provide advice, but… we are still tired from everything we've been though and need to rest."

Landon raised an eyebrow as he figured out the best way to proceed. "I get your reluctance," he finally said with a seeming hint of understand, "and legally I cannot force you to do this if you truly do not want to… But are you just going to leave us? Do know this!" His eyes narrowed and his tone turned stern. "If you insist on deserting your military at this moment, you are putting thousands of lives and the entire operation at risk! All we know about the other side comes from what you bothered to write down in this diary, and as helpful as it is it still leaves critical gaps of information. By turning your backs and staying behind, you're sentencing untold thousands of my men – _your rescuers_ – to needless death, and quite possibly the entire army to defeat. And if that happens and the monsters go back on the offensive, mind you, not only would you have contributed to their renewed reign of destruction upon your country and humanity, but they will hunt you down as intensely as ever! I understand that you are tired, but frankly so are we! The choice is yours!"

Wide-eyed and trembling, Ib and Garry compliantly nodded. The general's expression immediately lightened. "Excellent!" he said, "I knew you would make the right choice. I just needed to make sure you knew the full weight of your decision. Ib, I will inform your parents of this and be sure to get their consent. I will make sure they understand the necessity of the situation."

"Very well," sighed Garry, taking a deep breath. (By this point Ib had resigned herself to letting Garry do the talking) "So… before anything else, there are a few basic things you should know; you might have picked these up from Ib's diary. First, the basic laws of physics don't always apply there. Most of the Fabricated World resembles a giant, demented museum of sorts, but other parts are different, and I have a feeling it doesn't have a completely set layout like a real museum would. Anyway, if you thought a large amount of supernatural stuff occurred when the monsters attacked, it will seem like nothing when you reach their home. Doors may lock and unlock on their own, entire sections might appear to be made of crayon, and sometimes the gallery itself seemingly tries to taunt you or psyche you out, as if it's a sentient being unto itself. At times it doesn't seem to have any rhyme or reason, but all too often the entire world is your enemy.

"Also, upon arriving in the Fabricated World, each person will receive a rose. For us, they came in a special flower pot, but given the large number of men you're bringing I don't know if it will work that way. Regardless, that rose is literally your life. If you get injured, one or more petals will fall off, and likewise if it loses any of its petals, it injures you. When there are no more petals, you're dead. At the same time, the rose can be restored to health simply by placing it in water, and this in turn can be used to heal almost any non-fatal injury. Do know, however, that the roses can suck up entire flowerpot-fulls of water, so don't bring medical supplies and instead just bring large amounts of water."

"All very interesting!" responded Landon, "I will take note of this. However, for now, it would be best for us to pause and wait until we can conduct a more formal interview. In the meantime, you may go now to the quarters we have set aside for you. I will meet with you again tomorrow to resume this interview in a more proper, comprehensive manner, and you can expect the operation itself to begin a little under a week, give or take a few days depending on the logistics." He looked at Ib and Garry. "Unfortunately, since I will need you two in more than one place, I'm going to have to split you up at that point. An army requires guides both on the front lines and among the command staff. As such, Garry, I'm going to be attaching you to Colonel Robert Myler, whose brigade is spearheading the attack. As for you, Ib" He turned his attention over to her, "I'm attaching you to my command staff, farther towards the back."

Ib suddenly looked distressed. "Wait… Why can't – why can't I stick with Garry?!" she asked worriedly, finally speaking up.

"Because of the reasons I just said, and also, I can't assign a little girl like you to the front lines without the press throwing a temper tantrum."

At that point, another officer, wearing a slightly different but equally decorated uniform, entered the room with some paperwork. He nodded politely at Ib and Garry before looking at Landon and saying, "General, I still think it would be best to push the attack back a bit and spend more time on preparation."

Landon looked back at him; they appeared to be on familiar terms. "Relax," he said, half-smiling, "We already have a large number of forces left over from the initial defense, and the longer we wait, the more time they will have to set up _their_ defenses. Many a battle has been lost to indecisiveness, and I intend this not to be one of them. Besides, this isn't your call. Your air support has been appreciated greatly, and I'd love to be able to have it during the attack, but with the portal and all, it looks like we ground forces are going to be taking it solo here on out."

"Very well," the other officer said, "if you say so. You've gotten us this far, I guess." He saluted and left the room.

Landon turned back to Ib and Garry. "You may go as well. One of the men will show you to your quarters. You will be able to get yourselves cleaned up and have a medic check out any injuries you may have received. I will see you tomorrow."

Ib and Garry nodded and began to leave. Before they reached the door, though, the general called Ib back. "One more thing," Landon stated.

"Yes?"

"I need to have a short word with you about Mary. First off, she isn't actually dead, at least not anymore. Whatever happened three years ago, we know as a fact that she or at least a recreation of her was alive and present for the first stages of the invasion. I don't know if you were aware of that or if this is news to you."

Ib bit her lip and simply nodded.

"That's not the main point though. I know from your diary that part of you feels bad for her," continued Landon, "but here's the plain and simple truth: _Don't_. Remember, Mary isn't human. She's a convincing but hollow replica of one, a painted chunk of canvas shaped like a human. She isn't like you or me. It's possible she doesn't even truly think or feel, and only appears to do so. The little witch might look human and outwardly act human, but in reality she has far more in common with one of those three legged tank monsters than with any of us." He clenched his fist. "_She deserves no more consideration than a stick figure drawn on a random piece of paper_! Do you understand?"

Ib just nodded compliantly.

* * *

><p>"Fate itself conspires against me!"<p>

The air in the Fabricated World resonated with Guertena's rage and frustration. He vented his fury to no one in particular. "I'm denied the two I seek, I see my creations hurled back through the portal, and now I even have my daughter corrupted and stolen away from me! Why, why, does the universe insist on taking my enemies' side?!" he bellowed.

"I spent so much time preparing this attack," Guertena then hissed quietly, "I put so much labor and tears into creating a force capable of delivering retribution, I put so much thought into planning… and to see it all go wrong from the very beginning and then be foiled by the very two humans who wronged me in the first place?!" His voice regained its anger. "This is preposterous! This is atrocious! What did I do to deserve this failure!?"

He paused for a moment to collect himself. "But of course," he growled. It all made sense. They had so many advantages. He had nothing that could match their high-speed, jet-powered fighters. Next there was the issue of experience; he was an artist, trained to create. His foe, on the other hand, was a professional military! They spend all their time either waging or preparing for war! Of course they were going to be more skilled in the arts of death and destruction! And then! Who would have thought that Ib and Garry, that little girl and that effeminate pretty-boy, could cause so much trouble!

Guertena turned his attention towards the still-open behemoth portal, located at the front of his massive staging room. His still-numerous forces were marshaling in front of it, digging in for the inevitable human counterattack. He sighed. As humiliating as it was to admit, he actually did not have the power to close it, now that it had been permanently set open. There were some things not even a realm's demigod could control. And yet, even if he could, Guertena would not have been able to bring himself to close the portal. To do so would be to admit defeat, surrender. Even if he opened a new one later when he was ready, he would have acknowledged by closing the old one that his first attempt had failed. So, if keeping it open meant condemning the Fabricated World to a human onslaught… so be it!

Yet at that point, something occurred to Guertena. No army ever goes into an unfamiliar land without bringing along some sort of guide who is familiar with the place. And since there were only two humans who ever set foot in the Fabricated World… that meant the army was very likely to bring with them Ib or Garry, and quite possibly both!. His mood brightened. What he had tried so hard to seize himself, the army was about to bestow upon him like a gift! All he needed to do was be prepared to _accept_ it.

And so, Guertena set about restructuring his monsters' defensive positions, thinning out his first lines of defense and concealing and concentrating his strongest forces deeper into the massive staging room. The humans likely expected their attack to be greeted by heavy, immediate pushback, so there was a fair chance that they would keep at least one of them safely in the back of the army and not bring him or her over until a small foothold had already been secured. Well then, if that is what they wanted, Guertena figured, he would give it to them; he would allow them to penetrate far enough for their fool of a commander to feel safe enough to bring both of them onto the field, putting up just enough resistance to avoid raising suspicion. Since this was his world, he would know the exact moment it happened. And once that happened, Guertena thought to himself, then the _real_ defense could begin.

He had one more area of business to attend to. Guertena shifted his attention over to what was once his most beloved creation and subsequent recreation. "As for you," he growled, focusing on Mary's portrait, the one he had just completed on the eve of the invasion, "as for _you_, traitor, the one I used to call my child, you… I spent so much time in recreating you, so much thought into making sure you understood just what the humans did to you and showing them as the scum they are, so much effort into building an army to avenge you… And for what?! For you to forget everything I told you at the first sign of false kindness and to defect! I should've never –!"

Guertena suddenly paused for a moment and thought, and his rage grew even more intense. "But of course… how could it take me so long to realize it this?" he hissed. "You were like this from the very beginning. Ever since you were a few years old all you ever did was beg to see the human world, to abandon me for them! Why? It's so simple! You _are_ my humanity! When I created you, I invested my remaining connections to that vile race in you, in the foolish belief that it was all somehow worth saving! But how wrong was I! All I did was bring the corruption into my new world!"

A crafting scalpel began to levitate in front of Mary's portrait. "You have the taint of humanity inside you, so you act like one!" Guertena snarled. "It was a mistake to ever create you." He raised the scalpel, prepared to plunge it into the portrait where Mary's heart would be, and roared, "So now it is time for me to destroy what I should have never made in the first place!"

"Wait!" a young girl's voice cried out. "Father, please don't!"

Was that Mary?! or was that just his imagination? The line between reality and imagination could blur at times in this realm, particularly if you were its lord and creator. He surveyed the entire Fabricated World but saw Mary nowhere.

"Father, why do you do this?! Am I not still your child? Am I not still your daughter?!" the voice pleaded. He could tell it was in his imagination, but that made little difference.

"No!" Guertena shot back, "You are not my daughter anymore! You disowned me and ran off to the humans, lured by their false promise of acceptance and friendship!" He simply needed to respond, even if it was just a voice in his mind.

"Father! I never disowned you! I loved you! I still love you! I'm sorry! Why won't you accept me back?"

"You've had your chances!" Guertena fumed back, "and you will have no more! Enough of this!"

"But Weiss, dear!" the voice suddenly began shifting, seemingly now that of an older woman. Guertena was taken aback. Was that – No, it couldn't be. Was that the voice of his dead wife?

"Myrna?" he asked, dumbfounded.

"Weiss! You aren't the man I knew and loved anymore! What happened to him? What happened to his heart?!"

"But – but Myrna!" stammered Guertena, "L-look at what they have done to us! They forgot all about my work as soon as the next artist arose! Our own son abandoned us once he no longer needed our help! No sooner than I had laid you to rest, the seductresses and whores began hounding me for your inheritance!"

"Are you disowning all of humanity for this reason?" Myrna's voice implored back. "What about human kindness? Love? Compassion? Are you disowning those as well?"

"No, no, that isn't the case Myrna" responded Guertena almost pleadingly. "I never disowned kindness or compassion in and of themselves! The problem is that the versions of these virtues as held by the humans are nothing but a sham, self-interest and hypocrisy dressed up in the skin of kindness and compassion! They can only regain their meaning once we have cast aside human folly and selfishness, and until then it is all a sham!"

"Very well, Guertena, I see." Myrna's voice started to grow darker and lower. "So you do disown those human traits then." Guertena realized it was a demonic version of his own human voice. "But you know what else is human?" it asked mockingly. "Anger. Hatred. The need for revenge. The desire to make one's enemies suffer. These traits are as human as any love or compassion, if not more so! Now, are you going to tell me that you haven't been practicing these human traits as well during your campaign?"

Guertena tried to give a rebuttal found himself at a loss of words. For the first time since becoming lord of the Fabricated World, he began to feel small and impotent.

"Ah, I see," the demonic voice in his mind continued with relish. "You have no response, because you can give none!" The voice suddenly seemed to echo from every nook and cranny of the Fabricated World. "You are still human, even if you refuse to admit it! Even as you rush to disown certain aspects of your humanity, you unintentionally embrace other parts! Why, you are no less human than Ib and Garry or those other fools on the other side! You are no demigod or transcendent being! You're just a human who lost his physical – "

"Enough!" screamed Guertena, finally finding the strength to speak. The voices instantly vanished, leaving just him and Mary's portrait. There was silence.

Regaining his composure, he returned to his original task. The scalpel levitated back off the ground. Pushing out all other thoughts, Guertena raised the scalpel, prepared to drive it into the canvas, and with all his telepathic might –

Nothing. The knife stopped short of the canvas. He just couldn't do it. He tried a second and then a third time, but he still couldn't bring himself to strike the blow. There was no voice taunting or pleading with him… He just couldn't.

Snorting with disgust, Guertena let the scalpel clatter to the ground. "You'll pay for this weakness," he muttered to himself as he turned his attention back to his defenses. The issue with the painting didn't matter now.

What mattered now was that the army was about to hand him Ib and Garry… on a silver platter!

* * *

><p><em>(Landon and Guertena are my personal favorite characters. Being a military and geopolitical history buff, I find that Landon somewhat resembles more of what I am "used to," and Guertena... well, he's a place where I can place all my darkest observations about humanity, and then twist them to become even more warped.)<em>


	10. Into the Breach

On both sides, all was set.

Over in the Fabricated World, Guertena had put the finishing touches on his defenses. The staging room, which had once stored his entire army, would soon become a battlefield, and he had modified it accordingly. He had shrunken and narrowed the once-unfathomably large chamber to a (relatively) smaller, more manageable size, such that it now resembled an immense hallway. On top of this Guertena then divided the room to best suit his plans and split his forces between the spaces accordingly. Finally, he situated his own "portrait" (it didn't actually show his face, just his shoulder and arm), the object from which he derived his existence, in a chamber at the opposite end of the staging room from the portal. Of course it was purely symbolic since the portrait's physical location made no difference, but he had realized a simple truth. He could not think on the purely practical, strategic level of military science. That was part of why he lost the first time: he tried beating them at their own game. No. He would fight as an artist. The battlefield would be his canvas, his creations his paintbrush, and his enemies' blood the paint.

Preparations were also complete on the other side of the portal. The troops were gathered, the extra water tanks were ready, and a two-way radio relay system had been brought in that would be set up halfway through the portal, theoretically allowing for communication across the dimensional divide. Everyone knew to expect the unexpected. There had been a last minute argument over whether the attack force should include tanks despite the fact that Ib and Garry had described the Fabricated World as resembling an indoor area. Landon argued that whatever place the portal led to would've needed to be large enough to accommodate Guertena's largest monsters, and when combined with the likely appearance of those monsters in the defense, this justified the usage of armored vehicles. Some of his staff disagreed. Since they had no way of knowing just how much the Fabricated World even adhered to basic laws of physics, they argued, whose to say that the space on the other side might actually be smaller than the general suspected, and it works anyway simply because it's the Fabricated World? In such a case, bringing armored vehicles into this fight would simply clog their attack force. In the end, the two sides compromised. The front lines would solely consist of infantry, but the spearheading brigades' tanks would be kept on standby. It was not entirely in line with standard military doctrine, but neither was this whole war.

Garry found himself filling with dread as he stared at the portal. Never before had he taken part in a military operation of any kind, never mind a pitched battle. Even during his and Ib's ordeal, they never fought more than one or two small monsters at a time. He had read accounts of battles in history books and news reports, but that was entirely different. Garry had no idea what to expect. Would he survive to see tomorrow? Should he just kiss his life goodbye right now? Would he ultimately have to kill a monster or two despite not technically being in a combat position? He had certainly killed Fabricated World monsters before, but somehow the idea of going to their home and attacking them made him uneasy, particularly after his talk with Ib about 'the other.'

Still, Garry knew he had to push these issues out of his mind. He gritted his teeth slightly and resolved to do whatever he needed to do… or at least try.

He fidgeted nervously with the semi-automatic pistol side arm he had been supplied with. The officer next to him immediately stopped him. "For God's sake, That is not a toy!" It was Colonel Myler, the man whose brigade would be spearheading the attack and to whom Garry was attached. A clear military man, he was similar in mindset to Landon but a little coarser in his manner. Since being introduced to each other a few days ago, he and Garry got along… well enough. "You aren't in art school anymore! You're about to enter the battlefield, and if you don't take that fact seriously you're going to get yourself killed!"

"Sorry, sir," responded Garry. "I'm… I'm just a little nervous, that's all… Ib and I are new to this."

Myler sighed and shook his head. "Look, kid…" he slowly said, "this all sounds harsh, I know, but here's the thing: We're all nervous. The more you show it or let it control you, though, the more danger you actually put yourself in. You can't let your civilian qualms get in the way. Now, stick to the plan and show us the way, and then hopefully both of us will come out alive."

At that point, everyone's attention was called forward. It was almost time. The men began preparing for combat. General Landon came to the front and delivered a short battle speech. After many days of fighting the otherworldly abominations on our own soil, he declared, the tide had at last turned, and it was time to return the favor. The goal of the mission was simple: Storm the Fabricated World, neutralize the monsters at the source, and bring whoever or whatever orchestrated the attack to justice. For better or worse, he continued, this brigade would lead the attack, and he trusted in their ability to secure a foothold from which Landon could bring the rest of the army through the portal and press further. Be prepared not only for more monsters, he warned, but also supernatural occurrences; their world is not like ours, to say the least. Should the brigade need additional support, more reinforcements and armored vehicles were on standby. Regardless, he concluded, the eyes of all humanity were upon them today, and they would decide whether the day would belong to mankind, or to the aggressors of the Fabricated World.

And with that, the brigade – with Myler and Garry somewhat towards the back – advanced through the portal.

* * *

><p>The men emerged into what appeared to be an unfathomably vast, dimly lit hallway, so large and shrouded in fog-like darkness that one could hardly see the sides. Just as Ib and Garry had said would happen, every person received a rose. There were no vases this time. They simply materialized. Garry's familiar blue rose appeared in the small backpack he'd been issued, Myler received a dark green rose, and all the soldiers found themselves carrying roses matching their individual personalities.<p>

But they had no time to process this information. Moments after the humans had arrived, Guertena's creations all opened fire. With a tremendous bang, the air became a hailstorm of otherworldly projectiles. Men on Myler's front-most lines started dropping like flies. In the distance, they saw several of those three legged tank monsters positioning themselves to fire.

The soldiers fanned out and returned fire. "You said this place would be like a massive museum!" screamed Myler as he and Garry threw themselves to the ground.

"I didn't know! This place has no set layout!" Garry shouted back as bullets whizzed over his head. Myler reached for his radio handset before realizing the relay had not been set up yet, and ordered a nearby private to run back through the portal and request armored support. "Make sure they go as fast as they can with the goddamn tanks!" he barked as the private ran off.

"Wait!" Garry exclaimed, turning to Myler. "Sir, what do we do until then?!"

"We fight it out and teach them whose boss!" The final parts of the brigade were crossing through the portal now, bringing with them the water tanks and opening fire the moment they set foot in the Fabricated World. Others finished setting up the two way relay system, allowing for cross-portal radio communication. At the same time, more monsters seemed to be joining the fray. Several types such as the mannequin heads and the painted ladies charged in for melee combat. Iron-like claws clashed with steel bayonets. Bullets from both sides tore into human flesh and fabricated art material alike. Blood, petals, bits of stone, and flakes of paint littered the floor. It wasn't clear which side was winning. The human foothold was no more than a couple hundred meters in size (small considering the vast size of the chamber) and had for the moment bogged down, but they were definitely holding their own and inflicting casualties. The monsters held a slight numerical advantage, but for some reason they were mostly only the smaller, infantry-sized monsters supported by a dozen or so larger ones, and the human forces utilized the regenerative power of the roses to rapidly heal all but the worst battlefield injuries.

The fighting continued in this chaotic state for what felt to Garry like an eternity, when all of a sudden a large shell struck one of the brigade's main water tanks, sending water and shrapnel flying everywhere. More shells began falling on the human forces, tearing apart and tossing into the air several soldiers with each shot. "Shit!" exclaimed Myler, "those tripod monsters are softening us up for something!" He had several men try to neutralize the monsters with rocket launcher fire, but between accuracy issues and the monsters' armor, they were never able to do more than cripple one of the legs or disable one of the three gun barrels, leaving the monster with two more guns to attack with. Myler radioed in to see what the status was of the tanks. Their crews were getting ready as fast as possible, and they would be over in a minute or two. "Hurry up! We're being pounded!" he shouted.

Without warning a shell landed nearby Garry and exploded, throwing him to the ground and costing him no fewer than four petals from his rose. Wincing in pain, Garry tried getting up but found he'd broken his ankle. He knew what he had to do. Gritting his teeth and hoping that he'd have enough time to do this, Garry managed to pull out his drinking water canteen and jammed his rose in there as hard as he could. Within seconds he felt his leg heal as if nothing had happened. Picking himself back up, he got up and bolted back over to Myler just in time to avoid a second round that exploded where he was five seconds ago.

A minute or so later, the bombardment unexpectedly lightened up. The brigade braced for a renewed counter-assault from the smaller monsters, but right at that moment they heard a loud mechanical rumbling from behind them, and a second later a massive explosion tore a hole in the monsters' ranks. Myler and Garry looked over; several tanks had arrived along with more water. "Alright, here and ready for action sir!" crackled a voice over Myler's handset.

"And none too soon!" he growled back.

The tripod monsters promptly redirected their attention to this new threat and opened fire, destroying two of the lead tanks outright and disabling one of the treads on a third. More tanks nosed their way through the portal and returned fire, pulling away from the portal to avoid potentially clogging it. Heavy shells from both sides streaked across the battlefield. At first the tripod monsters seemed to have the upper hand, but as the rest of the brigade's standby tanks along with more specialized artillery vehicles emerged from the portal and began to bear down on their position, the human armor gained the edge. Garry watched a well-placed shot strike a tripod monster right in one of its "eyes" and detonate, blasting the monster in half.

Myler ordered his forces back on the offensive. With the exception of a couple self-propelled artillery units that stayed behind to keep the tripod monsters busy, the tanks roared forward deeper into the staging room, guns ablaze and infantry following close behind. Guertena's monsters continued to put up stiff resistance, but they slowly but surely began losing ground. Although the tripod monsters' multiple guns allowed them to engage multiple targets at once, it grew increasingly difficult as they took more and more damage, and they were only able to slow the brigade down. The other monsters seemed to grow increasingly frantic, clambering onto the tanks to try prying open the hatches and in a couple instances even throwing themselves into the treads in a vain effort to jam them. A statue managed to wrench the gunner's hatch of one of the tanks open, but before it could attack the crew an infantryman shot it down.

After intense fighting, Myler's forces pushed to almost point blank range within the tripod position. The tanks stopped, aimed, and all opened fire on them. Already greatly weakened, the tripod monsters tried to fight back but were unable to do so effectively and were soon all destroyed, reduced to smoldering wreckage. "Great job men," Myler stated as he observed the action. "They've lost their biggest guns now. Time to clear out the rest of them." Now sorely outgunned, the monster's defenses seemingly began to crumble, and the humans were able to press forward with growing ease.

Not long afterwards, Myler reached for his handset and radioed in. "General, this is Colonel Myler," he said. "We've cleared enough room now for you and Ib to come into the Fabricated World for yourself. We took a beating at first but now have the monsters on the run. Garry is alive and safe."

"Excellent work," crackled Landon's voice over the handset as Myler personally shot a wounded painted lady in the head with his side-arm. "We will be over there shortly." By now the fighting was becoming one-sided.

A few minutes later, the general called in again. "Alright, this is General Landon. Ib, my command staff, and I have crossed the portal and are on field, along with the rest of the army. Great job again men. It's possible though that we've only just scratched the surface. Press on, and let's finish this." Shortly afterwards a familiar young girl's voice crackled over the handset. "Hi Garry, this is Ib. Hang in there, you can do it. I believe in you!"

Hearing Ib's voice comforted Garry.

Finally, the brigade pushed the remaining monsters back to what seemed like an thick wall of vines, where they mopped them up completely, taking no prisoners. Once the last monster was lying on the ground motionless, Myler turned to Garry and asked, "do you have any idea what this means?"

"Yes," he responded. "These sorts of vines 'grow' to act like improvised barriers, used to cut groups apart or block off passageways. There are at least two variations; the plastic-like ones and the tougher stone-like ones… I think these are the latter."

"Very well…" Myler said, thinking. After a moment he turned over to the tanks and shouted, "All heavy guns, level this barrier to the ground!" All at once the tanks opened fire on the vines with an ear-splitting bang, but after several volleys, it was clear that they were only doing minor damage. "Very well then," the colonel snorted. "Captain," he said, turning to a junior officer, "have several squads go out in all directions and see if there's any way around this damn thing." The captain saluted and set off, sending out parties from his company to scout. Myler then radioed Landon to update him on the situation and to request the heaviest demolition equipment available.

As the rest of the brigade waited, Garry started getting an uneasy feeling. "Sir?" he asked, "this might be a dumb question, but… is it possible that Guertena let us get this far on purpose? I mean, as hard as that fighting was, where were all the big monsters, the gargoyles, all the rest of the tripod things, and hell, the behemoths?"

Myler paused to think for a moment, and then said, "It's possible, kid, but as a matter of tactics it would've made more sense to wipe us out from the beginning than let us establish a foothold. Besides, we're already here, so–,"

At that point, a sergeant from one of the scouting squads came back. "Sir, we found something," he stated. "We found a set of four doorways on the extreme left wall of the hallway, not far from where the wall meets the vines." He led Myler, Garry, the captain, and the rest of the company over to the area. Sure enough, there were four doors on the wall, each a separate color.

The soldiers who investigated the first door reported a large empty space made seemingly entirely out of crayon. They remained in the room for a bit, baffled by its very existence, when all of a sudden a spear materialized and shot across the room, nearly impaling one of the men. They promptly exited.

The next door led to a room full of portraits, much like a room in an actual museum. The squad of soldiers sent to investigate initially reported nothing of interest, but then all of a sudden the portraits came alive and lunged at them, shrieking like harpies. After a brief but bloody battle, three of the men and all of the "portraits" lay dead. For their efforts, the squad's survivors were rewarded with a grotesque plush doll holding a message that read, "The fun has just begun." "Wartime propaganda trash talk," Myler curtly dismissed it as upon learning about it.

The soldiers approached the third door more cautiously. Guns drawn, they entered it one by one. No sooner than the last one had passed through, though, than did the door suddenly slam shut and disappear. For a few seconds Myler and Garry heard blood curdling screams over their handsets, but then it fell silent. The door reappeared, this time slightly ajar, as if beckoning more to come in.

Only a few brave souls volunteered to go into the last door. They opened it extremely warily and went inside, this time having another soldier hold the door open. But to the surprise and relief of everyone, nothing unusual seemed to happen.

After a minute, one of them came out. "Sir," he told Colonel Myler, "There is a strange, talking painting in there that wants to speak with you… it says it has something important to share."

After hesitating a moment, Myler nodded. The soldier escorted him and Garry over to a crude picture of a demented smiley face, chuckling to itself as its mouth constantly twitched. Myler went up to it and said, "Alright listen painting. You've caused us enough trouble already, and our rules of war don't cover your kind, so spit it out!"

The painting seemed completely unfazed. "hehehe… No need to get angry, mister… hehe. I know how you can get your forces across the barrier… I just want one small thing in return," it said in a demented tone.

The colonel narrowed his eyes. "And what would that be?"

"Don't trust that thing," Garry interjected. "Ib and I saw it before, and it doesn't have your best interests in mind."

The painting ignored him. "All I want," it responded, "is that there pretty green flower of yours…"

Myler paused for a moment, and then pulled out his handgun and shot the face straight between the eyes. It emitted what sounded like a combination of a scream and a burst of laughter. Blue paint dripped from the hole. "Very… well then… ha…ha… I lied… I'll show you anyway…" It gasped before falling silent.

At that moment the ground suddenly started shaking. "What the hell is going on?!" the soldier asked in alarm. All of them ran out back out the door into the main area, just in time to see the vines beginning to crack. Small bits of green stone fell to the ground as more and more fissures appeared. And then, with a tremendous crashing noise, the vines all crumbled and collapsed, sending up an immense dust cloud. When the dust cleared, what Garry saw made his heart drop into his stomach: There, waiting on the other side of the barrier, was a massive army of Guertena's monsters, far bigger and consisting of more powerful monsters than the initial defense force. Row upon row of statues and mannequin heads. Dozens of the demon-like painted ladies. Several times more tripod monsters than what they had earlier encountered. Gargoyles. Behemoths. Several types of monsters never previously seen before. They were all there, waiting.

And right at that moment, they attacked. The ranged monsters opened fire while the melee oriented ones lunged forward. Myler's forces returned fire, but it was clear that they wouldn't be able to hold all of the monster off. "Sir – General Landon!" Myler radioed in frantically, "A massive force of monsters, much larger than the first group we encountered just appeared and attacked! There's no way my brigade can fight them off!"

"Damn it, I had a feeling there was something up! The second brigade is beginning to form a defensive line behind you. Have some of your forces conduct a rearguard action while the rest fall back to that line, and help them hold it until more reinforcements arrive. We aren't out of men just yet!" Landon's voice crackled over the handset in response. Myler hesitated, reluctant to send some of his men to almost certain death but knowing it was essential, before ultimately giving the affirmative. Directing his attention back to his unit, he ordered one infantry battalion and a handful of tank platoons to try and hold off the enemy for as long as possible while the rest fell back to the new defensive line.

"Wait!" Garry asked as they began to pull back. "Are we just abandoning those men to die?!"

"we have no choice!" shouted Myler back. "Even if it wasn't orders, it's either they die or all of us die! These are the sort of choices you need to make in the military!"

After several minutes of retreat, they reached the new defensive line. It was just in time, too. Although the rearguard force had fought admirably and held up the monsters for some time, they were ultimately overwhelmed. What the behemoths didn't crush outright, the smaller monsters mopped up afterwards. A few panicked survivors trickled back towards the human lines. The soldiers braced themselves for what they knew what was coming.

And then, with an intimidating collective roar, the monsters launched their counterassault on the human position. The air once again filled with a hailstorm of bullets. Melee monsters charged through machine gun fire to lunge at their targets. The ground became covered with blood, broken flower petals, and smashed bits of clay and canvas. At first the soldiers' defensive line seemed to be holding, but bit by bit as casualties mounted and the monsters took the time to specifically target the water tanks essential to the humans' regenerative abilities, the monsters started to push the humans back and begin cracking their defensive line.

One thing was certain: Guertena's largest monsters had to be stopped at all costs. "All armor concentrate fire on those behemoths!" another officer's voice crackled over the radio system. Every tank in the line stopped, took aim at the closest behemoth charging towards the position, and opened fire almost in unison. Dozens of shells smashed into its armored carapace and exploded, taking a collective toll on the monster. Damaged and enraged it reached down, grabbed a destroyed tank, and hurled it as a projectile, destroying a self-propelled artillery unit. The other tanks continued firing, though, and after one last salvo, the behemoth literally cracked apart and collapsed, crushing a swath of Guertena's smaller monsters. For a moment it felt like this would mark the point of the tide turning, but the emergence of more behemoths shattered those hopes.

Despite these and other occasional glimmers of hope, the situation was growing desperate. "Sir! What do we do?!" Garry frantically asked Myler as they just barely missed being hit by a volley of otherworldly bullets.

"Grab an assault rifle from one of the dead and start fighting!" Myler snapped. Garry instantly obeyed. Ditching his side arm for an assault gun retrieved from a dead body next to him, he took aim at a mannequin head headed straight for him and fired. To his elation, he scored a direct hit, shattering the monster with a straight hit to the forehead. He then was able to squeeze of two more monsters. He began to fill with optimism and confidence. It was is if he had the power to stop the entire –

At that moment, a shell landed right at Myler's feet and exploded.

…

The next thing Garry knew, he found himself sprawled out on the ground, badly injured, with his rose missing 6 of its petals. How long he'd been out he had no idea. Colonel Myler was nowhere to be seen, save for his petal-less rose stem and shredded green petals scattered all over the area.

Garry suddenly found several obsidian gun barrels being shoved into his face. It was the statues. They all had surrounded him, arm cannons trained on him. Struggling to his knees, Garry held up his hands in surrender. There was no last-minute rescue this time. No airstrike that would save him. He was captured.

* * *

><p>"Colonel Myler, Garry, come in!" General Landon repeated into his handset, hoping for a response. The battle was not going well to say the least, with some of his staff members even beginning to float the dreaded r-word: Retreat. The thought made Landon's skin crawl, but if things continued going south he may have no choice. And now he had just lost contact with two crucial individuals.<p>

"Myler! Garry! Come in!" he yelled yet again with greater urgency.

No response. Landon gave up in frustration and angrily cursed the turn of events. Ib, who had been listening in with growing concern, now went up to him cautiously and worriedly asked, "Is Garry okay? Is he hurt? Please tell me he's okay."

"Ib I'm going to be honest: You probably aren't going to see him again," Landon replied. "I've lost contact with him and the officer he's attached to, and the reports from the field aren't good. They're most likely dead."

Ib turned pale. "Dead," she quietly repeated to herself, lips trembling, and then fell to her knees in despair, just staring blankly at the ground. "Garry's dead," she tearfully whispered to herself again and again. She didn't start sobbing or wailing. She just sat there as if she was catatonic.

Landon went over to her. "Now Ib" he said, half-trying to strike a somewhat sympathetic tone, "I know, no one likes it when a friend dies, but you can't let that stop you! We still have a battle to turn around, and grieving isn't going to help anything. Come on now!"

No use. Ib didn't even budge, still as a statue. It wasn't even clear if she had heard him.

Landon snorted and turned away. Very well then. He'd turn this fight around himself, Ib or no Ib! He knew how to fight, and he'd do it. He'd –

Suddenly from behind him he heard what could only be described as the sound of reality tearing apart followed by a young girl's scream. Landon turned around in alarm just in time to see a shadowy hand dragging Ib into a pitch black hole in the ground. Once Ib was all the way in, the hand and hole vanished without a trace. A message spontaneously appeared on the wall: "My world, my rules."

* * *

><p><em>(Although I don't know how good a job I did, writing a battle scene turned out not to be as impossible as I thought it would be. To do it, I basically combined all of what I have learned from narrative recountings of historical battles, the lessons I got from ch5's fight scene, and descriptive writing in general.)<em>


	11. In Her Hands

_I have no idea how I managed to sneak back in and evade detection by the guards. It should have been impossible. There were soldiers everywhere. Nor do I have any idea how I slipped by the fighting and carnage on the other side without either side seeing me. Neither hold any warm feelings for me, that much I am aware of. _

_I do not even know why I have returned. What has brought me back here? Have I come back to beg for His forgiveness? To aid His enemies? To simply find a quiet place in my homeland to curl up and die? I truly do not know. All I know is that I must return._

_I venture further and further into what was once my home. I am drawn to His presence; I feel it getting stronger and stronger as I come closer and closer. He does not seem to notice me though. He is too heavily engrossed in whatever He is currently focused on. Is this for the better? For the worse? I do not know… Nor does it make a difference. My feet carry me along as if they have minds of their own._

_I reach a door. He is on the other side. I can feel it. This must be where His painting is now. As quietly as I can I crack the door open and peer in–_

_Oh my God! What is He doing to them?! I stare in silent, horrified shock._

_My breath quickens. My heart, the one He created for me, begins pounding. Such a sight might not have bothered me earlier, but now… I need to do something. I can no longer simply remain passive. But wait! No! How can I let myself even think such thoughts?! He is my father! Oh what do I do? I am torn. I must act… but on whose behalf? _

_I close my eyes. I must think. To choose either way feels impossible, but I have no choice. Clearing my mind of all distractions, I just stand there for a minute, reflecting. I need to contemplate. Memories of all that has happened flow in and out of my mind. A burning building. A rebar rod. A crying baby and a dead family. Anger. Confusion. Despair. A hug. A jacket. I ponder these. Who hates me less? Who accepts me more? Whose side am I on?__… Who is on my side?__… Whose side should I be on?_…

_My eyes finally shoot open. I have decided._

* * *

><p>Ib and Garry were in his grasp. Literally.<p>

Having been brought to a large chamber at the end of the staging room, the two of them were each held firmly in the air by a large shadowy hand, mounted atop a long, black, serpentine arm. Ib and Garry struggled in vain against the vicelike grip. The arms extended from the sides of a giant painting at least twice as tall as Garry that could only be described as a strange sort of self-portrait (it didn't actually show a face, just an artist's backside), presumably of Guertena. Opposite the painting was a small wooden ledge with two eternal blessing-type vases, the type that never ran out of water. One contained Garry's ten petal blue rose, while the other held Ib's six petal red rose. (The sixth was added in accordance to her growth since three years ago.) Why their roses were there, they could only guess, but they knew that the answer was almost certainly sinister.

A disembodied voice coldly laughed to itself. "At long last, you are mine, at long last," it sneered. Ib and Garry knew it was none other than Guertena. "I must admit, your ability to escape capture and frustrate my forces was as impressive as it was enraging, but in the end, you were only delaying the inevitable… For over three years now, you thought you could get away with your crimes – insulting my name; desecrating my art; murdering and then corrupting my daughter; killing my creations; sabotaging my retribution; assisting my enemies. The list goes on and on. Despite this, you probably felt not a pang of guilt nor until recently a twinge of fear. But justice ultimately prevails, oh little humans. Now here you are, in my grasp and at my mercy."

Garry tried to talk back but found no words could come out.

"But don't worry. I Know this isn't _all_ your fault," Guertena continued tauntingly. "You are merely part of the larger problem that is humanity. The injuries you inflicted against me are but part of a long train of abuses I have suffered from your kind. That is why this crusade must go on. Of course I would've preferred if you had not ruined my invasion, but when I realized that their forces would bring you along as guides, I rejoiced and prepared my welcome." He gave a dark chuckle. "I let them get as far as they did. It was funny. At first, when you struggled to break out of the first few hundred meters, I actually had overestimated your strength and needed to go easy for a bit. Now of course, it is my creations that have the upper hand, but oh of course now the irony is that your commander is now holding out surprisingly well, but it is only a matter of time. And once I have driven him back completely," Guertena continued with grim relish, "I shall continue this war, until one side or the other has been reduced to dust!… But either way, it doesn't matter now. I have won, because I have you.

"Now, you probably expect me to kill you, and as such you must be confused as to why I've placed your roses in eternal blessing vases. Well, had I caught you earlier, I probably would've been happy just to kill you, however slow it may have been." Ib and Garry could literally feel Guertena's sense of sadistic glee in the air as his tone turned dark. "But no. After what you have done, that would be too merciful," he slowly added. "Instead, you will _live_. With your roses safely in their pots, I can inflict almost any injury I want on you again and again, without ever having to worry about releasing you to the mercy of death. I can crush each and every bone in your body, just to watch it mend and become ready for me to crush again. I can dip you in molten lead and listen to your screams as music, and then bring you back in for an encore. So long as no single thing is enough in itself to kill your rose all at once! Your agony will go on and on until you beg me to simply remove your roses and rip their petals off, but I will say _no_. Oh where to begin? There is so much to do. So much –"

All of a sudden a palette knife hurtled through the air and embedded itself in Guertena's painting. The disembodied voice released a startled shriek of pain, and the shadowy hands dropped Ib and Garry. It was Mary! As if purely on instinct the two humans ran over to their unexpected rescuer.

"Leave them alone, Father!" warned Mary, staring straight at the towering painting before her. She stood almost protectively in front of Ib and Garry as they ran behind her. The pair couldn't believe what was happening before their eyes. As for Mary, never before had she spoken to Father like that. The size difference between her and her Father's manifestation corresponded with the unbelievable nature of everything that was going on.

Guertena began to regain his composure. "Mary…" he hissed, "So you _are_ a traitor then… You–"

"_I said_, leave them alone!" she repeated with even more determination. Ib and Garry noticed two brambly, plastic-like vines growing out of the ground, about an inch thick and covered in large thorns except on the bottom, which was smooth. When they reached a little over a foot in height, they stopped growing and detached from their bases, falling to the ground. Realizing Mary had grown them to be wielded in defense, Ib and Garry picked the two surprisingly heavy brambles up, holding them like miniature maces.

The air filled with Guertena's fury. "Very well then," his disembodied voice snarled. The already palpable sense of rage in the air grew even more intense. Ib and Garry heard a faint click as the door to the chamber locked itself. "I'll kill you all myself! This ends here and now!"

With that, Guertena hurled the palette knife back straight towards Mary's head. She dodged and retrieved it from the ground, but before anything else could happen, Ib, Mary, and Garry all saw one of the giant fists rising up to squash them. "Watch out!" screamed Garry. The three of them scrambled out of the way just in time to avoid Guertena's hand slamming into the ground. The impact cracked the floor and set up several shards of stone. Guertena then tried to swat them with his other hand, but all of them were able to duck down to the ground, and the shadowy limb swung just over their heads. Ib and Garry realized they needed to fight back. Dodging out of the way of another attack, Garry grabbed a shard of the stone floor and hurled it straight towards the giant painting. It embedded itself into the canvas right as Guertena was about to corner and crush his daughter, causing the hands to wince and lose coordination long enough for Mary to scramble away. This time though Guertena was not entirely taken by surprise, and no sooner than Mary had wriggled away did Guertena's other hand snatch Garry and lift him into the air. Guertena raised the arm up to dash him against the floor, but just as Garry thought he was about to die, he saw the thorns of Ib's bramble burying themselves into the shadowy limb below. To his and Ib's surprise, the attack actually seemed to affect the arm, causing it to recoil and drop Garry and leaving dark purple gashes in the parts of the limb where they struck. Yet by the time Ib had run over to Garry and helped him up, the gashes had healed. Ready to attack, the hand formed a fist and rocketed towards Ib, but right before it reached her Mary swooped in and tackled Ib out of the way, the two of them just barely avoiding the attack.

For Ib, Garry, and Mary, it seemed like a frantic fight for survival against two massive black serpents. Guertena's fists, each almost the size of Garry, swung about the room wildly as he tried to strike, smash, and crush his three foes. Although somewhat slow to react, his long shadowy arms seemed able to bend in any direction and even shorten or lengthen as necessary, all while retaining tremendous strength. Quickly finding that they could only inflict temporary harm on the hands, Ib and Garry realized the only way to truly hurt Guertena was to damage his painting, but it was mounted too high off the ground for them to reach directly. Shifting strategies, the two of them focused on only keeping the hands at bay while they tried to find whatever possible projectiles they could throw at the painting. When Guertena conjured a scalpel and hurled it at Garry's head, no sooner than it missed did he find it hurled straight back into his painting. Mary, still reluctant to further harm her father's painting, fought more defensively, focusing mostly on her and her two allies' safety from the hands. Sidestepping a forceful punch from her father, Mary spun around, stabbed the arm as hard as she could to buy time, and resumed her focus on finishing the protection she was building around something only she seemed to remember in the heat of the moment, trying to get as much growth in before the shadowy hand could regenerate.

A shriek jolted her out of her concentration. Guertena's other hand had managed to grab ahold of Ib and lifted her into the air. "No!" screamed Garry. Chuckling darkly, Guertena jerked his arm back and hurled Ib against the side of the room. With a loud crash she slammed into the wall. Pain ripped through her body as she felt several bones all snap at once, but just as she was certain she was going to die, she abruptly felt them heal and the pain disappear! The roses! Ib and Garry had completely forgotten, and apparently so had Guertena. Seconds later the other, now-recovered shadowy hand grabbed Garry and slammed him against the floor, but he too soon stood back up without a scratch. Realizing this was all his own design, Guertena's bewilderment morphed into self-directed rage. Cursing his prior hubris, Guertena turned his attention to the ledge where the vases and roses were, only to find it protected by a thick tangle of prickly plastic vines.

And just like that, the nature of the fight changed. Guertena now not only had to divide his attention between the battle outside and the fight inside, but also between finding a way to get to the roses while simultaneously fending off Ib, Garry, and Mary. Unable to bring his full power to bear, weakened slightly by the damage to his painting, and needing to focus on several tasks at once, he pulled one of his hands out of the fight and set about using it to try and dismantle the barrier, pulling off bits and pieces where he could do so with minimal contact with the thorns, and leaving the other hand to fend off the three attackers all by itself.

"Ib, Now's our chance!" shouted Garry. Ducking underneath a vicious sideswipe, they grabbed two more stone shards off the ground and hurled them straight into Guertena's painting. His hands wincing in pain, Guertena retaliated by swinging his free arm and swatting the two against the wall, but once again, no sooner than did their bones snap and the petals fall off the roses did the petals regrow and the bones heal. Increasingly frantic, Guertena turned his attention to Mary, who was doing her best to repair any damage to the bramble barrier, and sent his fist rocketing towards her. Catching her off guard, he managed to strike a glancing blow before she could fully get out of the way. Reeling backwards into the wall, Mary gritted her teeth and looked back up to see the hand preparing to finish her off, but just before it reached her, she sank her palette knife deep into the palm before wrenching it upwards, sending the shadowy hand recoiling backwards with a tremendous purple gash. Right at that moment, a broken piece of bramble Garry threw embedded itself into Guertena's portrait.

For the first time, Guertena actually began to fear the two individuals he had brought into the Fabricated World three years ago. Again and again he managed to strike and slam Ib and Garry, but each time they got back up seconds later, fully healed thanks to the roses. Meanwhile, every time he tried to deal with Mary, she always managed to slip out of the way or counterattack at the last moment. Ib's, Garry's and Mary's confidence was rising. They could do this! They could pull this off! They –

"That's it!" All of a sudden Guertena swatted his three foes aside and then grabbed the bramble barrier around the vases with both hands, paying no heed to the thorns digging into them. Feeling their hearts drop into their stomachs, Ib and Garry struggled to their feet as fast as they could and raced over to intervene, but it was too late. With a determined pull Guertena managed to rip Mary's barrier apart, and then destroyed the ledge with the equivalent of an uppercut, shattering the two vases and splashing puddles of water across the room. A jolt of pain ripped through Ib and Garry as the impact sheared off half of their roses' petals each and flung the flowers upward. Guertena reached to snatch Garry's flower from the air, but just then someone threw a third rose-like object into the air, and Guertena mistakenly caught that instead. With triumphant relish he crushed it between his fingers, only to find bits of Mary's fake yellow flower everywhere. Garry caught his rose and was able to restore it with one of the larger puddles on the ground. Meanwhile, Ib's rose plummeted downward flower-side first. Lunging into the air, she caught the rose just in time before it could hit the floor but then stumbled on her landing and fell face-down onto the ground with a painful thud, costing a petal. A sharp ceramic fragment from the vase sliced into her skin, removing another petal from her rose. With only a single petal left and in great pain, Ib looked up and saw one of the fists rising up to crush her. She gritted her teeth, managed to dip her rose into the closest puddle to heal herself, and then scrambled out of the way just in time to avoid being squashed.

Despite having safely regained their roses, the situation began to look grim. Now with no water to regenerate their roses except puddles, Ib and Garry had to do whatever they could to keep themselves and their delicate flowers safe, frantically avoiding Guertena's fists. They knew all too well what a single blow could do, and they had already used up two of the four puddles of any significant amount of water. Mary too was beginning to look somewhat battered; the blows she had faced and the fatigue of battle were catching up with her. Once or twice Ib and Garry found enough time to pick up more debris and hurl it at the painting, but by now they were questioning whether it was even truly doing anything aside from temporarily stunning Guertena. Worst of all, though, some of the initial holes in Guertena's painting seemed to actually be healing.

Garry suddenly had an idea. Remembering what happened with Mary's original painting and the flammability of the vines blocking her room, he pulled out his lighter and brought the flame to the piece of bramble Mary had given him. To his horror, though, it would not ignite; it was now fire resistant for some reason. Just then, one of the shadowy fists punched him straight on, causing him to drop the lighter and sending him careening into the wall. "Garry, no!" screamed Ib before she herself was sent reeling by a glancing hit from the other giant hand. As Garry tried to drag himself to the nearest puddle Guertena raised his arm and prepared to finish him off, but at the last moment his hand was stopped by a large plastic vine shooting out of the ground as if to intercept the blow, growing far faster than any such vine he had seen during this fight earlier. He looked up and saw Mary concentrating as hard as she could, but then Guertena grabbed and hurled her against the side of the room. Bouncing off the wall, Mary crashed down into the floor with a sickening thud, and did not get up.

As Guertena prepared to finish off Garry and Mary, Ib, who was recovering from the glancing blow she received earlier, spotted the lighter on the ground and realized what she needed to do. Scrambling forward and retrieving it, she pulled out her lace handkerchief and wrapped it around the end of her piece of bramble where it started to taper off, cutting herself at one point on the sharp thorns. Spotting what she was doing, Guertena took his attention off of Garry and Mary and tried to crush Ib with his fist. Dodging out of the way, Ib lit the handkerchief on fire, ran forward, and hurled the bramble as hard as she could, like a burning torch.

It sailed through the air, seemingly in slow motion.

It struck Guertena's painting near the bottom of the canvas, igniting a small portion of it.

And almost immediately, it burst into flames. Within seconds it was engulfed completely. The heat could be felt across the whole room. The shadowy hands froze and withered away. Ib, Garry, and Mary felt in the air first denial, then rage, then desperation, despair, and finally embittered resignation, and then the sense of there being a presence in the room finally disappeared as the flames died out. The doors to the chamber unlocked. Outside the room, the death of their creator had an immediate impact on the monsters doing battle with the military. Half of them simply died right then and there, crumbling to dust. Of those that remained, coordination fell apart instantly. Most tried to struggle on individually, but others simply stopped fighting and stood there, offering no resistance as if they had lost any sense of purpose in their existence. Having been pushed near the brink of withdrawal, the human army rallied and made short work of both groups. Before long, only a handful of those monsters that had submitted completely – several dozen statues, a handful of mannequin heads and painted ladies, a tripod monster or two – remained, which the army promptly rounded up and took prisoner.

Back in the portrait chamber, Ib and Garry used the two remaining puddles to restore their roses and then ran over to Mary. She was lying on the ground, badly wounded and clearly in great pain. A couple spots on her clothes seemed to be stained by a rainbow colored fluid. "Mary, are you okay?" asked Ib worriedly, stooping down. She knew the answer already but wasn't sure what else to say.

Mary looked up at them. "It… it hurts." she simply groaned. Upon closer inspection, Ib and Garry realized that the rainbow colored fluid was her equivalent of blood. Making eye contact with Garry, Mary then asked, "Do… Do you forgive me for… for what I did to you before?"

The two were initially at a loss for words. Barely over a week earlier, Mary had tried to kill them, again. Never in a million years did Ib or Garry think they would hear this question. For a moment they simply stared in shock, but finally Garry managed to say, "Yes. And thank you... for saving us."

There was a pause. He then asked a question that would've seemed downright unthinkable until recently, a question that required him to call into question everything he had felt about Mary for three years: "Will you – will you forgive _us_ as well? For what _we_ did to you before?"

Mary nodded, and then her pain directed her attention away again. She clenched her teeth and grimaced. For who-knows-how-long Ib and Garry just sat there, quietly looking over their wounded… friend. Finally, Garry turned his attention to Mary's injuries. "Okay," he tried reassuring her, "Hang in there. Your wounds don't look fatal. We're going to get you to a hospital in the real world. They should be able to treat your injuries. Together we can help you pull through." In truth, he had no idea what he was talking about, and he certainly had no idea whether the same treatments used for humans would work for a living painting, but he did not want to cause Mary any further distress.

Mary looked back up uncertainly. "Wait," she said worriedly. "Will… will they accept me?"

"Yeah…" Garry replied, smiling and trying to remain positive. "They will accept you, and after they fix you up, you can go out and live a normal life, make friends, and –"

"There they are! And the little witch too!" A gruff voice cut him off midsentence. A squad of soldiers had just entered the room. The sergeant's eyes were on Ib and Garry, but the soldiers' guns were all trained on Mary.

* * *

><p><em>(So apparently the best way to fight off giant shadowy hands is with oversized plastic chunks of bramble. Good to know. Anyway, special thanks to Disciple of Ember for letting me send him a draft of the final fight, along with his vital support and encouragement from the beginning. I was going to save the big "thank you" for the concluding chapter, but here it is now. Don't unfollow just yet though: one question remains: Are we any better than "He" was?)<em>


	12. Victor's Justice

For several seconds, everyone just stood there. The soldiers kept their guns trained straight on Mary. Ib and Garry looked up in silent alarm at the men they would've otherwise rejoiced to see. Mary looked up at them too, her face one of fear and despair. All the while the sergeant's eyes darted between the three of them. Finally, he pulled out his handset and radioed in his discovery to General Landon.

"No, you don't need to point your guns at her," said Ib quietly, "She–"

"Wait until the General gets here. She's still a hostile."

"But–" Ib's voice faltered.

After what felt like an eternity, Landon finally arrived, accompanied by a squad of guards. He and the sergeant exchanged salutes. After that, Landon nodded at Ib and Garry, took at contemptuous look at Mary, and then stepped out of the room for a moment with his radio handset in hand. From the other side, Ib and Garry could hear him say in a low voice, "Landon here. Tell the boys at the lab that I've found her, and I'm sending this one over to them special. My only request is that there be enough of her left to put on trial and hang afterwards."

He then came back in the room as if he were entering for the first time. "Ah! You're alive! Excellent!" he exclaimed. "We thought for sure that both of you were dead!"

Before Ib and Garry could answer, one of the guards interjected. "Should we call for a medic from the other side of the portal?"

"Just go back for a stretcher and bandages. I don't want that thing dying on me, but I think she will survive." The general's guards along with the squad that first found Ib and Garry departed, leaving just Ib, Garry, Mary, and Landon. "Anyway," he resumed as he surveyed the damage and destruction within the chamber, "what happened here?!"

Ib and Garry gave him a quick summary of what happened– The disembodied voice and the shadowy hands, the dramatic fight, and the final moments. They made a strong point of trying to emphasize Mary's role as having saved them. "So yes," concluded Garry. "I'm pretty sure we killed Guertena."

"Well then!" Landon said, clearly impressed. Even after everything he saw in the Fabricated World, he needed to survey the room a couple times to clear any lingering skepticism about the incredible tale they just told him. For a brief moment he also took a second glance at Mary, as if suddenly second-guessing his original view. After a few moments though, he clenched his fist and resolved to carry out his duty. "Your actions couldn't have come at a better time. Not too long ago half of the monsters suddenly just crumbled while the rest fell into disarray, and I suspect it's connected to what happened here. If so, you helped save the day and end the war once and for all. Congratulations again, and thank you immensely. I will see to it that you are properly recognized for your role in humanity's victory." Ib and Garry nodded in thanks, surprised and somewhat honored.

Landon then turned his attention to the wounded entity in the green dress. "As for you, you little unhuman monster," he concluded as Mary's expression changed from one of pain and fear to one of pure terror. "We'll be taking you someplace special."

Ib and Garry's blood ran cold. Out of the corner of her eye, Ib saw Mary staring at her frantically, silently begging her to not just stand there. "Wait! Hold on! What are you doing with her?!" Ib demanded.

"Relax," replied Landon, seemingly unphased. "She isn't going to die. We just want to _learn_ a little bit about her."

Ib didn't know exactly what he meant at first, but the way the general said that last part sent a chill down her spine. A second later it hit her, and she felt a horrible sinking feeling. At that moment the soldiers came back with a stretcher and set of bandages. One of them began wrapping the gauze around some of Mary's more readily accessible wounds. It was clear there were no tender feelings involved in this though; even as she was being bandaged, the other soldiers' guns still remained trained on Mary, fingers on the trigger.

"I don't' think you understand! Mary helped us!" said Garry.

"You too?" responded Landon with a little bit of dismay, "well listen. Again, she isn't going to die. This isn't a promise I can make for any of her less human-looking siblings. We've already taken her help into account." He paused and then added quietly but sternly, "I'd also prefer not to talk about it too much in front of the men, in case there are still any… ahem, bleeding hearts."

"But sir, she _does_ have feelings! She _does_ think for herself! She _is_ just like you or me!" pleaded Ib.

"What did I tell you back in the real world?"

"No, you don't understand, she–!"

"Ib, listen. Remember our talk? You're letting her fool you." Landon pointed at the rainbow colored fluid. "See that liquid?"

"Yes?"

"Does any real human bleed that color?"

"No…"

"Does any real human crumble to ash when a painting is burned?"

"No…"

"That's right. You do remember our talk." Landon made a tiny smirk. "Now, that will be the final outburst from you two. Technically this area too is under martial law, and I'd _hate_ to have to turn to any disciplinary measures after everything you've done for us… Are there any more questions?"

Ib and Garry were dead silent. Mary's desperation gave way to despair as her only defenders backed down with hardly any fight.

"Good. Lets proceed." Ib, Garry, and Landon began to exit the room as the soldiers hoisted Mary onto the stretcher. They tied her down to it just for good measure. Looking on, the pair felt helpless. There was nothing they could do at this point, it seemed. But compounding this was also a sense of guilt. Hadn't Ib and (especially) Garry too felt this way about Mary once, and in that sense weren't they complicit in what was now taking place? Garry felt regret over having dismissed Mary as merely a painting. Ib for not having ever stood up to him on that matter.

They looked into Mary's eyes for forgiveness, hoping that she understood that they had advocated for her but that it was no use, that they had done all they could. Instead they saw frantic pleading, begging them to do something to spare her this fate. She had just saved them from her leader! Why won't they save her from theirs?! She didn't understand. How could they just give up so easily? How could they abandon her like this?! Didn't they – didn't they see her as being no less than a flesh-and-blood human?

Ib and Garry could no longer bear to face it. They looked away.

Landon, his entourage, Ib, and Garry left the portrait chamber back into the staging room, with the guards wheeling Mary along not too far behind them. Outside, Ib and Garry saw patrols of soldiers on milling about, leading a handful of captured monsters away, searching for any remaining ones that were still at large. Dead and destroyed monsters littered the area. Every now and then, a soldier would reach down and use a knife or bayonet to cut off a part a fallen enemy. A painted lady claw, a hacked off gun from one of the headless statues, perhaps a broken chunk of canvas. It didn't matter what the souvenir was. All of this occurred within General Landon's sight, but he did not bat an eye.

Not too far ahead was a small prison truck that had been waiting for them. "Alright, load Mary up and send her on her way," said the general to his men. The back of the truck was opened, revealing a stark, cell-like interior. This was the end. After all Mary had done for them… This. Woe to the vanquished.

As the guards prepared to wheel Mary into the back, Ib happened to make eye contact with her one last time. She saw the exact same look of betrayal and despair that she saw in Mary's eyes as she burned to death three years ago.

Right at that moment she remembered part of a nightmare she had right before the invasion: _"You could've said something; you could've stopped him."_

Without warning Ib suddenly ran in front of the stretcher and blocked its path to the truck. Landon spun around and glared angrily at her. "You! –"

"No! I'm not going to let you do this!" interrupted Ib. She defiantly stared Landon straight in the eye. The sheer audacity of a twelve year old girl doing this took everyone by complete surprise. "You may just see her as some horrible monster, but in fact she is a thinking feeling being who deserves just as much consideration as you or me! How is she any different from a human girl like me in the things that are important?! She laughs like me, she cries like me, she has hopes, dreams, and fears like me. Why does it matter what color she bleeds or whether she was created with paint?! If you are going to take her, you need to take me too!"

Garry joined Ib. "Yes, she is right!" he boldly stated. "If you could do this to Mary, you could do this to anyone! You all see her, and she hears every word that we are saying, and yet somehow you still deny that her life means anything. That is the exact same process of dehumanizing 'the other' that leads to genocide, apartheid, slavery, and so much of what's wrong in the world! And don't you dare say that this is different because Mary isn't 'human,' because that's the exact same thing they said about every group that has been oppressed like this!"

For a moment, everything was completely quiet. A silent crowd of soldiers began to gather around the confrontation. One could've heard a pin drop. "This is your last warning," then seethed Landon, "Before I have you arrested and court-martialed! Mary is _not_ human, and you have absolutely no way of knowing whether that thing just simply acts like it thinks and feels. Now stand down at once or else face the punishment!"

Ib and Garry didn't budge an inch. "Go ahead! Arrest us! We will not stand down for our friend – yes, friend!" she retorted. "And yes, we _do_ know that she isn't just 'faking it,' because we saw her and have been with her enough to know. We fought her, we came to understand where she was coming from, we comforted her when her father called her a traitor and cast her out. The only reason we never mentioned this was because we knew that _you_ wouldn't understand!"

Landon's eyes narrowed. For a moment he fumed in silence and then snarled, "Okay that's it! MPs! Arrest those two!" The military police began advancing towards Ib and Garry, who stared back at them defiantly. Their eyes locked with those of the guards as the latter came closer and closer. They had abandoned Mary once; now that they had a choice, they were not going to do it again.

Just then, Garry spoke up again, this time addressing the soldiers around him. "Mary saved all of us, you know," he declared. "You, me, all of us."

This gave the MPs pause. The shock and tension in the area was palpable. "You did not just say that!…" growled Landon through clenched teeth.

"Yes, I did." Garry turned back towards the military police, knowing that he had hit home. "When Ib and I were captured, we were brought straight before the spirit of Guertena himself, who promised an eternity of torture for us two and unending war for the rest of you, and this all would've happened were it not for Mary. As he was gloating Mary suddenly attacked her father and gave us enough time break free from his grasp, and together the three of us were then able to bring him down. That is how she received the injuries she has now. That is why Ib and I are here right now, and from what I've heard, and that's why the monsters' ranks suddenly fell apart when we finally defeated Guertena. If turning on her creator isn't a sign of free will then I don't know what is! We owe all of this to Mary, and now your general seeks to cut her open like a lab rat. Not only that, but he explicitly requested that we not bring any of this up in front of all of you, for fear that any 'bleeding hearts' would be upset!"

All eyes now fell on Landon, who was growing red in the face. The soldiers who had had their gaze fixed on Ib and Garry were now staring straight at their commanding officer, as if everything had just been reversed.

"So here's my question for you, General Landon." Garry continued after a short pause. "Do you think this is right?! Mary has just saved untold thousands of lives and possibly humanity as a whole or a large chunk of it. She risked her own life for us, and this is how we reward her?! Are the lives of Ib, myself, and who knows how many of your own men less important than whatever sick knowledge we can gain by cutting open this living, thinking being on a dissection table?! If this is the sort of humanity that we were fighting for, then I don't what makes us any better than the other side! That is all I have to say! If you're going to arrest us now, go ahead and do it!"

None of the military police made a move. Seconds felt like centuries. All eyes remained on Landon. Everyone held their breath.

Finally, Landon reached for his handset and radioed in, "Landon here. Listen, I'm cancelling the delivery of Mary to the lab – Why?! I have my reasons! Over!" With a snort Landon jammed the handset back into his coat pocket, stated that he was rescinding the arrest order for Ib and Garry, and then started to stalk off. After a few steps though he stopped and turned around. "Okay listen you two," he said crossly, glaring at Ib and Garry, "You're lucky that you already contributed so much to our cause, but mark my words! Mary might not be headed for the lab anymore, but she isn't going free. If you want me to treat her like a human, then fine I will, and will have her imprisoned like any other goddamn war criminal. I will have that witch prosecuted for everything she and her father caused, and I will do my best to ensure she is punished to the fullest extent possible under the law! You hear me?!"

"Yes," calmly replied Garry, "and we will do our best to ensure that the court hears the other side of the story as well."

"Well God bless you, but God damn you! Now prepare to return with the rest of the army to the other side of the portal! Dismissed!" With that, Landon turned around, instructed the driver of the prison truck to switch his destination, and set off on his way for real this time, muttering, "You're such a pushover." Meanwhile, the guards resumed loading Mary back into the truck's back, except now bound for the detention cell as opposed to the dissection room. As the guards prepared to slam the back doors shut, Ib and Mary's eyes met one last time.

Ib saw her fabricated friend mouth the words "thank you."

* * *

><p>"What do you think is going to happen to the Fabricated World now?" Ib asked Garry. Now back in the real world, Ib and Garry mostly kept to themselves, away from the celebratory atmosphere in the rest of the barracks. Tomorrow they would be reunited with their families, this time hopefully for good. But for now, the days' events were all they could think of.<p>

Garry shrugged. "I dunno. Most likely the government in partnership with several corporations will try to find a way to commercially exploit its supernatural properties. As for the town, it will probably become re-centered around this portal once the rebuilding starts." There was a period of silence, and then he asked a new question. "Anyway, how… how did you find it in you to stand up to the general like that? You're normally so soft-spoken."

"I… I don't know… It all just burst forward as if it had been building up inside me. I – I just couldn't stand by and let them do that to Mary…"

Garry smiled and put his hand on Ib's shoulder. "Well I didn't know I had it in me either, but either way, I think we did the right thing…" He stared off absentmindedly. "It's as if we all have some innate potential for mutual understanding and empathy, even as we also hold the potential for mutual hatred and dehumanization. Now that I think about it, even Landon seemed to hesitate when he learned that Mary saved us before resolving to carry out his original intentions, and it also had an impact on the soldiers as well. It's as if being human means having both aspects in us, both individually and as a society, and the question becomes which one wins out…" Garry realized at that point that he was starting to go off on one of his rambles and stopped.

To his surprise though, Ib did not look confused. "Which part then do you think will win when it comes to what happens to Mary?" she asked, looking straight at Garry with her ruby red eyes.

Her friend took a moment to think. "Well," Garry finally said, "that depends in part on us. The way for us to support Mary now is to make sure that everyone who hears Landon's side of the story, also will hear her, no, _our_ side of the story as well. To make sure they hear that Mary is not 'just a painting.' Without our cooperation, it will be hard for anyone to gather enough evidence to punish Mary severely… We are a screwed up species that routinely kills millions over perceived differences, but every now and then the better angels of our nature prevail, and our job in life is to try to make that happen whenever it can, be it with Mary or anyone else, human or otherwise."

* * *

><p><em>(I was considering a couple possible endings when I began writing the story in earnest. A 'dark' ending where Ib and Garry remain silent and thereby become complicit in whatever horrible fate awaits Mary. A more mixed ending in which Ib finds and destroys Mary's painting as a form of mercy killing. Etc. Ultimately though, I am a huge sucker for happy endings, or at least partially happy endings, so here we are.)<em>

_(It has been one year since I started this fanfiction, give or take a day depending on your time zone. When I first began it I never imagined that I would have any following or just what an amazing journey this would be for you and/or me. This marks the conclusion of The Rejected. Thank you to everyone who helped make this possible.)_


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